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.

“Lobsang and 66 fellow monks were imprisoned in 1959. When released 21 years later, he was one of only three survivors. While in prison his best friend, a rinpoche, died in his arms. Tensin was later discovered to be the reincarnation of that friend. Lobsang said there are so many characteristics of his old friend in the young boy”. (Photo and caption by Phil Borges)

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

United States Coast Guard Academy Cadets Second Class Aurimas Juodka, left, and Sheila Bertrand get in the face of “swab” Kevin Lennox as Bravo Company finishes at the barber shop and mailroom during R-Day, the reporting-in day that marks the beginning of the 7-week “Swab Summer” for the class of 2018 Monday, June 30, 2014, in New London, Conn. About 250 prospective cadets, Swabs, start the program designed to indoctrinate them to the military life of the academy and at the end will be accepted into the corps of cadets. (Photo by Sean D. Elliot/AP Photo/The Day)

Revellers chat on Havana's Malecon seafront before performing at a carnival parade, Cuba, August 12, 2016. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

In this September 1, 2016 photo, 90-year-old street vendor Antonio Bauza waits for tourists to sell his bananas, next to the village church in Remedios, Cuba. With the arrival of the first commercial flights from the U.S. to Cuba in more than 50 years, the Cuban government is welcoming the wave of new visitors and struggling to update infrastructure that's already overwhelmed. (Photo by Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)

French mounted bullfighter Lea Vicens is gored by her first bull and falls off her horse during the 31st day of the San Isidro bullfighting festival at Las Ventas bullring in Madrid, Spain, 10 June 2017. (Photo by Victor Lerena/EPA)

This picture taken on January 3, 2019 shows a Vietnamese woman collecting incense sticks in a courtyard in the village of Quang Phu Cau on the outskirts of Hanoi. In Vietnam's “incense village”, hundreds of workers are hard at work dying, drying and whittling down bamboo bark to make the fragrant sticks ahead of the busy lunar new year holiday. (Photo by Manan Vatsyayana/AFP Photo)