Love Island star Maura Higgins brought her signature glamour to Soho as she made a special appearance at MAC's flagship store on Carnaby Street on February 8, 2025. In the heart of London's West End, Carnaby Street renowned for its trendsetting fashion, beauty, and vibrant energy was the perfect backdrop as Maura greeted fans and posed for photos. (Photo by Andy Barnes/w8media)

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.

ISS Expedition 66 main crew member, actress Yulia Peresild blows a kiss through a bus window as she leaves for the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on October 5, 2021. The launch of the Soyuz MS-19 mission to be involved in making the feature film “The Challenge” (working title) aboard the International Space Station is scheduled for 5 October 2021 at 11:55 Moscow time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. (Photo by Sergei Savostyanov/TASS)

In this February 5, 2014 photo, Divaldo Aguiar, who plays the part of Pachencho, is carried in a mock coffin during the Burial of Pachencho celebration, through a cemetery in Santiago de Las Vegas, Cuba. Cuban villagers stage a mock funeral and burial of Pachencho, with a living man playing the part of Pachencho, in a boozy festival that has become an annual tradition in this small town near Havana, held each February 5 for the last 30 years. (Photo by Enric Marti/AP Photo)

US film star Elizabeth Taylor and her first husband Nick Hilton, of the hotelier family, on their wedding day.