Participants take part in a high-heel race at a Gay Pride party in the central neighborhood of Chueca in Madrid on July 3, 2014. (Photo by Gerard Julien/AFP Photo)

Women stand on the “martyrs' bridge” spanning the Tigris River in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, February 24, 2023. (Photo by Jerome Delay/AP Photo)

Dancers of the Saint Balthazar Kamba Kua traditional group perform in honour of Saint Balthazar, one of the Three Wise Men, during the Afro-Paraguay festival of Kamba Kua, in Fernando de la Mora, Paraguay, on January 6, 2024. The annual festival is a tradition that keeps Paraguay's Afro-descendants connected with their African roots through ancestral dance, drumming and customs. (Photo by Norberto Duarte/AFP Photo)

A wounded servicemen of Ukrainian Military Forces looks on after the battle with Russian troops and Russia-backed separatists in Lugansk region on March 8, 2022. The number of refugees flooding across Ukraine's borders to escape towns devastated by shelling and air strikes passed two million, in Europe's fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II, according to the United Nations. (Photo by Anatolii Stepanov/AFP Photo)

Austrian alpine skiers (LtoR) Georg Streitberger, Klaus Kroell, Max Franz, Joachim Puchner, Romed Baumann pose in the Olympic Rings on February 4, 2014 at the Mountain Olympic Village at the Rosa Khutor Alpine centre, four days prior to the start of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP Photo)

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 man passes by an unfinished street art graffiti made in a stairway by French street artists Zag and Sia in Paris on March 1, 2016. The two artists drew inspiration from famous “Liberty Leading the People” (La Liberte guidant le peuple) painting by French Eugene Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 and viewed as a symbol of the French Republic. (Photo by Joel Saget/AFP Photo)

Hotel staff practice self-defence skills after a training session given by team member of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 7, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)