Belarus' Aryna Sabalenka poses with the 2023 Australian Open winner's trophy in Royal Botanic Garden in Melbourne on January 29, 2023, following her victory over Kazakhstan's Elena Rybakina in the women's singles final of the tennis tournament. (Photo by Carl Recine/Reuters)

Scottish actress Karen Gillan (L) and guests attend the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 World Premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on April 27, 2023. (Photo by Rich Polk/Getty Images for Disney)

Bowden Loch, near Melrose, Scottish Borders, Scotland. The Northern Lights made an appearance over the Uk on the evening of the 7th October 2024. (Photo by Phil Wilkinson/The Times)

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.

An infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope which shows generations of stars is seen in this undated NASA handout image released February 14, 2013. In this wispy star-forming region, called W5, the oldest stars can be seen as blue dots in the centers of the two hollow cavities (other blue dots are background and foreground stars not associated with the region). Red shows heated dust that pervades the region's cavities, while green highlights dense clouds. (Photo by NASA/Reuters/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian/Handout)

A small section of the expanding remains of the Veil Nebula, a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago. The entire nebula is 110 light-years across, covering six full moons on the sky as seen from Earth, and resides about 2,100 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. Image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Released September 24, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team)

Monster girl Crazy Sa-ya, an iconic Harajuku girl and a staff member of the cafe, wearing a face mask poses for a photograph at Kawaii Monster Cafe, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Tokyo, Japan on January 31, 2021. (Photo by Issei Kato/Reuters)

American singer and songwriter Ava Max gestures as she arrives at the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California, U.S., May 27, 2021. (Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)