A tearful Beatle lover pleads unsuccessfully with a policeman to carry her fan button to Ringo, one of the four mop-top singers who drew squeals and shrieks from more than 30,000 spectators at two Indiana State Fair shows in Indianapolis on September 4, 1964. (Photo by Bob Daugherty/AP Photo)

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.

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)

Lightning strikes during a storm over the Ionian Sea in Calabria, Italy on June 27, 2016. (Photo by Alfonso Di Vincenzo/Pacific Press/Rex Features)

A fan runs on the field during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LV between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs at Raymond James Stadium on February 07, 2021 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

Middlesbrough star Paul Gasgoigne is confronted by streakers at The Riverside on December 6, 1998 during their match against Newcastle. (Photo by Owen Humphreys – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)

American actress, dancer, and singer Ariana DeBose arrives at the 75th annual Tony Awards on Sunday, June 12, 2022, at Radio City Music Hall in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Photo)

Rwandan woman drummers perform during the photocall for “The Book of Life” at the Edinburgh International Festival on August 11, 2022 in Edinburgh, Scotland.The Women Drummers of Rwanda,have broken with tradition to empower women to take part in a exhilarating and liberating of musical art-form. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)