Rag pickers collect recyclable material at a garbage dump in New Delhi November 19, 2014. (Photo by Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

Players in action during the Swamp Soccer Championships 2019 in Hyrynsalmi, Finland, 19 July 2019. The World Championship in swamp football is played annually on Vuorisuo bog in Hyrynsalmi. (Photo by Tomi Hanninen/EPA/EFE)

A Ukrainian serviceman kisses his partner at the train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Thursday, March 23, 2023. (Photo by Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo)

Switzerland's Lea Sprunger in action during the 300m hurdles race during the Weltklasse Zurich Inspiration Games, a virtual international athletics meeting with 30 athletes in eight disciplines at seven venues worldwide, in the Letzigrund stadium in Zurich, Switzerland, Thursday, July 9, 2020. (Photo by Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)

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.

Photo: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 – 1924) lying in state in the Kremlin. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1924

Important! For the same article in Russian language click here.

Something quite intriguing is happening within Russian-speaking internet during the last few – should you type a fully academic inquiry (at least, according to Russian academic requirements) in national search engines for "Lenin's mausoleum" – the first thing you get (even in top 10 searches) is website pages talking about black magic and occult. Website authors view this construction differently, but unconditionally agree on one thing: the mausoleum of the "leader of the world proletariat” – the essence of a magical artifact, a sort of “energy vampire”. It was built with a certain purpose: to drain the energy out of miserable Soviet citizens on one hand; and to poison the anthroposphere of one-sixth part of the earth with its vibes (the exact territory that was occupied by the former Soviet Union), depriving the Russian people of will to resist on the other hand. Complete nonsense? No doubt. Nevertheless, an intriguing one. Well, probably because some oddities do exist in mausoleum's history. These oddities are the thing we are going to discuss this time. First, let me refresh you memory on the subject.

A combination photo shows various popular street foods under $6 from various hawker food stalls and eateries in Singapore, taken between July 28 to 31, 2016. Top row (L to R) bak chor mee, soya sauce chicken; Middle row (L to R) laksa, hokkien mee, nasi lemak, ice kachang; Bottom row (L to R) rojak, roti prata and satay. (Photo by Edgar Su/Reuters)

A young woman wearing no trousers hits the ski slopes at a ski resort in Xuzhou, in east China's Jiangsu province on January 13, 2015 in a promotional effort to equal “No Pants Subway Ride”, which was marked on January 11 this year. The promotional “No Pants Subway Ride” stunt on January 11 was held as commuters in some 60 cities around the world braved public transportation in their undies, which has gone global since its first staging by US group Improv Everywhere in New York in 2002. (Photo by AFP Photo)