Members of Taliban take pictures of the devastated village of Mazar Dara following a deadly magnitude-6 earthquake that struck Afghanistan, Kunar province, Afghanistan, on September 1, 2025. (Photo by Sayed Hassib/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.

North Korean traffic police women chat next to a residential building while off duty Tuesday, October 18, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Photo by Wong Maye-E/AP Photo)

Pusha the cat, which adopted four bereaved baby squirrels and currently feeds and lives with them, lies at a local park of miniatures in Bakhchisaray, Crimea on April 25, 2019. (Photo by Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)

Two Inuit children at Point Barrow, Alaska, holding the tusks of a large walrus, probably killed for food, circa 1930. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

Elephants dust themselves with soil at Taigan safari park in Belogorsk, Crimea on May 4, 2021. (Photo by Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)

A clothing shop displays its merchandise in the rebel-controlled city of Idlib, Syria November 7, 2015. (Photo by Ammar Abdullah/Reuters)

“Woman with Umbrella in Rain” by Raimund von Stillfried. Artist: Kusakabe Kimbei (Japanese, 1841–1934), 1870s. Commercial photography studios in Meiji-era Japan were renowned for the subtlety and refinement of their coloring techniques. This hand-tinted image of a young woman caught in a heavy rainstorm achieved its naturalistic effect by knitting together multiple strands of artifice: the greenery in the foreground was a studio prop; the flaps of the kimono were suspended by thin wires to create the impression of a strong wind; and long, diagonal marks were made on the negative to suggest streaks of rain. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)