Women dance at the Taiga nightclub in Batroun village, north of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, July 2, 2021. With their dollars trapped in the bank, a lack of functioning credit cards and travel restrictions imposed because of the pandemic, many Lebanese who traditionally vacationed over the summer at regional hotspots are also now turning toward domestic tourism. (Photo by Hassan Ammar/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.

A street performer dressed up as a waiter performs for at Marques de Larios street in downtown Malaga, Spain, July 4, 2016. (Photo by Jon Nazca/Reuters)

Yushan Ou of China competes on the balance beam at the Women's Team Final during the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships at M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England, Tuesday, November 1, 2022. (Photo by Thanassis Stavrakis/AP Photo)

Palestinians walk at the site of Israeli strikes on houses, in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on November 21, 2023. (Photo by Abed Sabah/Reuters)

In this February 1, 2017 photo, Anjali Lama, a transgender model from Nepal, looks at her mobile phone backstage during Lakme Fashion week in Mumbai, India. Growing up as the fifth son in a poor farming family in rural Nepal the dream to be a fashion model came late in life.(Photo by Rafiq Maqbool/AP Photo)

Devotees wear costumes made of banana leaves as they head to church to attend mass as part of a religious festival, in honor of St. John the Baptist, also known locally as the “mud people” festival, in Aliaga town, Nueva Ecija province, north of Manila, on June 24, 2017. Farmers coated in mud paraded in Philippine villages on June 24 to mark one of the Catholic nation's most colourful religious festivals. (Photo by Noel Celis/AFP Photo)

This Monday, September 15, 2014 photo shows glazed bricks displayed at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad. The Islamic State militants seek to purge society of all influences that don't conform with their strict, puritanical version of Islam. That means destroying not only relics seen as pagan but also Muslim sites they see as contradicting their ideology, particularly Sunni Muslim shrines they see as idolatrous as well as mosques used by Shiites, a branch of Islam they consider heretical. (Photo by Hadi Mizban/AP Photo)