In this handout image provided by Parks Australia, thousands of red crabs are seen walking in a drain on November 23, 2021 in Christmas Island. The annual migration of red crabs begins with first rains of the wet season on Christmas Island, usually around October or November. Millions of the red crabs make their way across the island to the ocean to mate and spawn. (Photo by Parks Australia via Getty Images)

British-American actress Anya Taylor-Joy sticks out her tongue as she poses during a photocall for the film “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 16, 2024. (Photo by Christophe Simon/AFP Photo)

Praia du Forte, Bahia. “This was the lead picture for a National Geographic story on Bahia, because it was both mysterious as well as a “geography” picture showing where the slaves arrived from Nigeria. Beach pictures seem like they should be easy to take, but for me they are actually quite difficult. Too easy to fall into cliche. When I saw the kid coming on the horse, I quickly ran to see if I could make something with a woman in a bikini that was not a bikini shot”. (Photo by David Alan Harvey/The Guardian)

People wear masks to help guard against the Coronavirus in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, February 23, 2020. On Sunday Iran's health ministry raised the death toll from the new virus to 8 people in the country, amid concerns that clusters there, as well as in Italy and South Korea, could signal a serious new stage in its global spread. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

New Market traders rescue an injured shopkeeper who got hurt during a clash with students from Dhaka college in Dhaka on April 19, 2022. (Photo by Munir Uz Zaman/AFP Photo)

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 member of the “Avocadoo” club performs a pole dance on a street sign pole in Lodz, central Poland on June 27, 2013. Talk about a traffic stopper: three pole dancers in central Poland have been honing their skills out in the streets, throwing their legs around signposts to the surprise and delight of many a passerby. (Photo by Janek Skarzynski/AFP Photo)

A panda bear sits on a logs in a zoo on January 15, 2015 in Hangzhou, China. (Photo by Feature China/Barcroft Media)