Colombian-American actress and TV personality Sofía Vergara in the second decade of December 2023 flaunts her figure in a body-hugging dress. (Photo by Sofiavergara/Instagram)

A child reacts as people attend a protest organized to celebrate the announcement of the ceasefire in Gaza,at Yarmouk camp in Damascus, Syria on January 17, 2025. (Photo by Yamam Al Shaar/Reuters)

Women Wrestlers, Bolivia. Lucha libre (Bolivian wrestling) is one of the most popular sports in the country. Women wrestlers are known as cholitas and have in the last ten years become popular in the sport. Here, Carmen Rosa and Yulia la Pacena perform in a benefit show to raise money for the bathrooms of a school in La Paz, Bolivia, 26 June 2011. (Photo by Daniele Tamagni)

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.

David Bowie wears an eyepatch in red suit and guitar on blue background at Top Pop television studios in Holland while doing playback to his hit song Rebel Rebel in 1974. (Photo by Barry Schultz/Sunshine/REX Shutterstock)

A man holds his umbrella during snowfall on the Areopagitou pedestrian street beneath the Acropolis hill during snowfall in Athens, Greece, January 10, 2017. (Photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters)

A visitor feeds a food pellet to a giraffe in the Giraffe Centre in Nairobi, Kenya January 15, 2017. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

Two Inuit children at Point Barrow, Alaska, holding the tusks of a large walrus, probably killed for food, circa 1930. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)