Dressed in ancient Chinese clothes, children at a local kindergarten dance and make traditional perfumed medicine bag to celebrate the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival, Ganyu district, Lianyungang city, east China's Jiangsu province, 19 June 2020. (Photo by Imaginechina via AP Images)

A woman uses a tree branch to fight a fire on the road leading to the village of Parada, near Mortagua, northern Portugal, Thursday, August 11 2016. Firefighters in Portugal are battling multiple blazes fed by brush in a hot, dry summer for a sixth straight day. Major fires have also been raging in northwestern Spain and southern France. (Photo by Sergio Azenha/AP Photo)

A young man, who says he is part of a local criminal gang, poses for a picture holding a gun in the neighbourhood of Korogcho in Nairobi, Kenya, March 19, 2015. Around 2 million people live in the shantytowns packed in around Kenya's capital. Crime is high amid chronic unemployment levels, while basic services and sanitation are scarce. Residents try to make the best of things, eking out a living and picking up work where they can. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Reuters)

Co-Host Kristin Chenoweth speaks onstage at the American Country Awards 2011 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on December 5, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Deal or New Deal, Season 2. Pictured: Meghan Markle, 2006. (Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Students exercise in body training at Bishan Vocational Education Center in Chongqing, southwest China, January 13, 2016. These students were trained to be stewardesses of the high-speed train. (Photo by Xie Jie/Xinhua)

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.

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows American singer Andra Day in “The United States vs Billie Holiday”. Day accepted the award best actress in a motion picture drama at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, February 28, 2021. (Photo by Takashi Seida/Paramount Pictures via AP Photo)