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 view of a Gucci's advertisement campaign selected for an exhibition to celebrate creative vision of a creative director Alessandro Michele at Gucci Garden Archetypes, in Florence, Italy, Thursday, May 13, 2021. (Photo by Antonio Calanni/AP Photo)

A girl splashes water over a boy amidst soaring temperatures at the Shati camp for Palestinian refugees in Gaza City on July 17, 2023. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP Photo)

A Palestinian youth demonstrates his parkour skills on a street in Gaza City, January 15, 2016. (Photo by Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

Friends and relatives of Palestinian Fulla al-Masalma, 16, mourn during her funeral in the village of Beit Awa, west of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank on November 15, 2022. Israeli forces shot dead the Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank the previous day, the Palestinian health ministry said, while the army confirmed raids and a shooting incident in the area. The Israeli Defence Forces reported that its soldiers had fired at a car that was speeding toward them and that “hits were identified”, but without confirming the fatality. (Photo by Hazem Bader/AFP Photo)

Beesan al-Jubeh, (L), Palestinian under-10 national karate champion, trains with her father Sami (R) and other family members, all wearing face masks and gloves due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, outside their house in the city of Hebron in the Occupied West Bank on April 9, 2020. (Photo by Hazem Bader/AFP Photo)

Demonstrators clash with riot police during a protest against the contract for the Canadian mining company FQM in Panama City on October 25, 2023. Demonstrators and police clashed Tuesday in Panama as protests over a copper mine spilled into their fifth day, with President Laurentino Cortizo vowing he would prosecute acts of “vandalism”. The protesters are concerned about potential environmental damage from operations at the mine owned by First Quantum, a Canadian firm and one of the biggest copper extractors in the world. After protests erupted on Friday and continued over the weekend, demonstrators had yet to let up by Tuesday in Panama City and in other provinces. (Photo by Roberto Cisneros/AFP Photo)

Pupils from St Teilo’s Catholic Primary School in Tenby, South Wales, perform a scene from their Nativity play in the second decade of December 2023. The three kings, played by Jack Rigby, Santos Basilnomo and Tommy Leggett, pretended to follow a star on South Beach, a stone’s throw from the school. (Photo by Joann Randles/Cover Images)