A sculptural artwork depicting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and headless presidents shot by a hooded high school student (not pictured) is seen at the Contemporary Art Museum in Santiago, December 2, 2014. The artwork, part of the “El ladrillo angular” (The angular brick) exhibition, portrays a student fighting against the ongoing continuity of dictatorship because of a political and economic system which has been impossible to destroy, according to “Papas Fritas” the artwork's creator. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

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 white whale wears a wreath at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium-amusement park complex in Yokohama, Japan, on October 3, 2012. (Photo by Associated Press)

Breath at sunset, captures a sea turtle at a dive site called Black Rock. Kāʻanapali, Hawaiʻi, August 2013. (Photo by Christopher Doherty/Smithsonian.com)

In this May 4, 2014 photo, a miner holds an amalgam of mercury and gold he mined after working a 28-hour shift at an illegal gold mining process, in La Pampa, in Peru's Madre de Dios region. Thousands of artisanal gold miners sweat through the long shifts and endure, for a few grams of gold, the perils of collapsing earth, limb-crushing machinery and the toxic mercury used to bind gold flecks. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

A female member of the Ahbab Al-Mustafa Battalion holds a gun as she undergoes military training in Aleppo's Salaheddine district, June 24, 2013. (Photo by Muzaffar Salman/Reuters)

An Australian athlete does a handstand as she arrives with her teammates during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Games 2014 in Glasgow, Scotland, Wednesday July 23, 2014. (Photo by Frank Augstein/AP Photo)

A saddle-billed stork stands in the grassland at the Nairobi National Park near Nairobi, Kenya January 23, 2017. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)