Cheng Liping, whose husband Ju was onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 which disappeared on March 8, 2014, shows a picture of she and her husband together and an old card with a message given by her husband, at a park near her house where she and her husband used to visit during an interview with Reuters in Beijing July 24, 2014. Cheng said her life has been totally changed since the incident. Their two little sons, who don't know about this incident, keep asking her when their dad is coming back. Six months after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with 239 mostly Chinese people on board, disappeared about an hour into a routine journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing March 8, loved ones of missing passengers derive what comfort they can from what's left behind after the world's greatest aviation mystery. More than two dozen countries have been involved in the air, sea and underwater search for the Boeing 777 but months of sorties failed to turn up any trace – even after narrowing the search area to the southern Indian Ocean – long after batteries on the black box voice and data recorders had gone flat. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

A firefighter holds a red panda (Ailurus fulgens) from its tail while removing it from a tree at a residential area in Kunming, Yunnan province, July 3, 2014. The animal was spotted in the residential area and was brought down from the tree after residents reported its sighting to the police, local media reported. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

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.

“Leopard Hunting a Stork”. “One-shot capture. I watched the leopard stalking the stork, I only had time to focus at 400mm, no time to change to high speed, I watched the stork, and as soon as it flapped its wings, I shot one shot”. (Photo by Paul Rifkin/National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest)

Richard Gamboa, dressed up as Santa Claus, walks in an alley of the slum Cota 905 during the “Santa en las calles” (Santa in the streets) event donating toys, food, and clothes in Caracas, Venezuela on December 1, 2018. (Photo by Marco Bello/Reuters)

A six-year-old acrobat performs on the opening of a tourist festival in Bozhou, Anhui province, China May 3, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

A model falls over on the runway in a design by Victoria Bliss during the Project NextGen show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Resort 18 Collections at Carriageworks on May 16, 2017 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Stefan Gosatti/Getty Images)

A sticker is seen at the Rocky Mountain Guns and Ammo store in Parker, Colorado July 24, 2012. The killing of 12 people at a midnight screening of the new Batman movie in the Denver suburb of Aurora may spark a fresh round of soul-searching on America's relationship with guns but few predict any real change in the law. (Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)