A man washes his horse as a woman bathes her son at concrete water pens under a flyover in a slum area in Kolkata, India October 21, 2016. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

Photographer Howard Schatz had an idea: place actors in a series of roles and dramatic situations to reveal the essence of their characters. Such was the premise behind his book, In Character: Actors Acting, which captures some of Hollywood’s most emotive stars in the act of, well, making faces. Luckily for us, he continued the tradition for Vanity Fair. Here are some of the best.

A guest’s hands at the Essence Black Women in Hollywood awards luncheon at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills, California on March 24, 2022. (Photo by Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Members of the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) demonstrate their skills on motor-bikes during the BSF Golden Jubilee Day celebration in New Delhi on December 1, 2015. (Photo by Money Sharma/AFP Photo)

Festival goers having fun at the Balaton Sound music festival in Zamardi next to the Lake of Balaton, 110 km (68 miles) west of Budapest, July 6, 2017. (Photo by Zsolt Furesz)

Secret arrive during the 1st Gaon Chart K-POP Awards at Blue Square on February 22, 2012 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

In this March, 2015 photo, a person sits at an upright piano that had been hauled up to Topanga Lookout in the Santa Monica Mountains in Calabasas, Calif. For a couple of days last week, a Southern California hilltop was alive with the sound of mystery. Hikers venturing to Topanga Lookout found a battered upright piano sitting on a graffiti-scrawled concrete slab with a panoramic view over the mountains between Calabasas and the Pacific Ocean. Turns out, the piano was used for a music video by Seattle-based artist Rachel Wong. The cinematographer, Michael Flotron, says he and four others used a dolly and rope to haul the 350-pound instrument a mile up the trail on Tuesday. After the shoot, it was too dark to get the piano back down. Flotron says people seem happy to leave it there. But if necessary, he'll haul the piano back down. (Photo by Michael Flotron/AP Photo)

An Afghan policeman frisks a man while a burqa-cald woman sits in the trunk of a car on a roadside in Herat, Afghanistan, 05 July 2015. At least 18 police, two civilians and 30 rebels were killed in central Afghanistan during three days of fierce fighting, police said on 04 July. The clashes ended 04 July after security forces retook control of nine police checkpoints that had fallen to the rebels. (Photo by Jalil Rezayee/EPA)