In this picture taken on August 1, 2022, a priest performs a ritual on a newly purchased car to seek blessings from the deities for safety outside a temple in Bangalore. (Photo by Sebastien Berger/AFP Photo)

Models pose during the LoveShackFancy Spring/Summer 2023 Presentation at Cooper Hewitt Museum during New York Fashion Week in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., September 12, 2022. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

First responders work at the site of a deadly bus crash, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on February 10, 2025. (Photo by Josue Decavele/Reuters)

A common gallinule runs across the water to escape a nearby alligator at Green Cay Nature Center in Boynton Beach, Florida on September 4, 2025. Unlike most waterbirds, gallinules have long toes that allow them to walk on floating vegetation. The species is known for its loud, cackling calls that often echo through wetlands. (Photo by Ronen Tivony/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A child sits in a walkway at a shelter for families displaced by gang violence, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, May 22, 2025. (Photo by Odelyn Joseph/AP Photo)

American dancer and model Dita von Teese performs a strip-tease, 23 October 2006 at the Crazy Horse saloon in Paris. Von Teese is giving eight performances of her show “the bath” at the famous Parisian cabaret. (Photo by Francois Guillot/AFP Photo)

Alaa Shabat lives with her six children in a tent erected inside the Austrian cemetery in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on November 13, 2025, after her husband became ill and unable to work. (Photo by Tariq Mohammad/APAImages/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

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.