Actor Sophie poses on September 5, 2022 in various locations in character at the Goodwood Race Track ahead of next week Goodwood's Revival meeting (16-18 September). (Photo by Peter Tarry/The Times)

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.

In this January 6, 2017 photo, transgender inmates get a security check from female officers before entering their cell at Pattaya Remand Prison in Pattaya, Chonburi province, Thailand. The prison separates lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender prisoners from other inmates, a little-known policy despite being in place nationwide since 1993, according to the Department of Corrections. (Photo by Sakchai Lalit/AP Photo)

A counter-protester gestures during a Black Lives Matter protest following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, in London, Britain, June 13, 2020. (Photo by Simon Dawson/Reuters)

People look through the front windshield of a damaged trolleybus in Donetsk, January 22, 2015. At least seven civilians were killed on Thursday when a shell or a mortar hit a trolleybus stop in the rebel-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, a Reuters witness said. The Reuters cameraman said he saw six bodies on the ground near, and inside, a trolleybus in a southern district of the city. Windows of shops nearby had been blown out by the blast. (Photo by Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

A woman waits at a polio immunisation health centre, in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, August 29, 2016. Nigeria's military has liberated large swathes of land from Boko Haram but a ride with an army convoy, all guns firing for fear of ambush, shows how far the northeast is from normality after a brutal Islamist insurgency that has displaced millions. (Photo by Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

A silicon rug in the form of Adolph Hitler on display during an exhibition by Israeli artist Boaz Arad, at the Center for Contemporary Art February 22, 2007 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Arad is an Israeli artist who is dealing with the Holocaust in a provocative way. He uses the Holocaust to discuss human evil and contemporary Israel, which he says is torn and crumbling. (Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images)

Jimmy Arnold, an overweight boy from Rochester, bites into a cake. (Photo by Reg Birkett/Keystone/Getty Images). 14th April 1951