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 Pakistani child, whose family was displaced by 2010 floods from a village in Pakistan's Sindh province, sits on a wooden cart outside her family's makeshift home, in a slum on the outskirts of Islamabad, on February 8, 2013. (Photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP Photo)

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)

A Tibetan artists wearing a traditional costume waits before their performance during the 82nd pre-birthday celebration of Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama at a Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal, 05 July 2017. More than 1,000 monks and other Tibetans gathered at the Monastery compound to celebrate their spiritual leader's birthday. The Nepalese government has banned all kinds of Tibetan activities against the Chinese rule in Tibet so Tibetans have been changing the venue of the Dalai Lama's birthday celebration. The Dalai Lama will turn 82 on 06 July 2017. (Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA)

In this Wednesday, April 12, 2017, photo, waitresses wait outside a restaurant in Pyongyang, North Korea. A generational divide is quietly growing in North Korea, often hidden behind relentless propaganda. On the streets there are young women in not-quite mini-skirts and teenage boys with baseball hats cocked sideways, K-pop style. (Photo by Wong Maye-E/AP Photo)

Waves triggered by Typhoon Hato are seen in Hong Kong, China on August 23, 2017. A powerful typhoon barreled into Hong Kong on Wednesday, forcing offices and schools to close and leaving flooded streets, shattered windows and hundreds of canceled flights in its wake. Typhoon Hato came within 60 kilometers (37 miles) of Hong Kong, close enough to be considered a direct hit under Hong Kong's storm warning system. It was headed toward the western side of mainland China's Pearl River Delta. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

This image made available by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory on Wednesday, May 31, 2017 depicts NASA's Solar Probe Plus spacecraft approaching the sun. On Wednesday, NASA announced it will launch the probe in summer 2018 to explore the solar atmosphere. It will be subjected to brutal heat and radiation like no other man-made structure before. (Photo by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory via AP Photo)

A Sphynx cat at the 2017 Grand Prix Royal Canin international cat show at the Crocus Expo Exhibition Centre in Moscow, Russia on December 2, 2017. (Photo by Sergei Savostyanov/TASS/Barcroft Images)