Mamediara attends the Met Gala Party for Jean Paul Gaultier x Shayne Oliver Group held at Sapphire in Manhattan on May 6, 2024. (Photo by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post)

English-born American model Emily Ratajkowski looks stunning as she models a new clothing collection for Express on October 28, 2016. The Blurred Lines beauty, 25, poses in a lace bralette for the US brand, as well as showing off her sporty side in athletics wear. (Photo by Express/Splash News and Pictures)

The first legal wedding ceremony in history was performed in a hot tub when Leslie Davis, 23, and Richard Bustardo, 29, got married during the Backyard Living Show in Los Angeles, March 26, 1975. The ceremony was held in a five-foot hot tub, with the bride wearing a bikini and the groom attired in swimming trunks and top hat. In background is best man Arnold Holland and bridesmaid Bonnie Heckenbach, who joined the couple in the same hot tub. Officiating is Betty Jane Shaw, left. (Photo by Harold Filan/AP Photo)

Kate Applepie outside the Batsheva presentation during New York Fashion Week (NYFW) in New York, New York on September 8, 2024. (Photo by Sara Konradi for The Washington Post)

People jump into a swimming pool seeking relief from the summer heat, in Sanaa, Yemen on August 7, 2025. (Photo by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

An aerial view taken with a drone shows people walking past dried lava (L) from a previous volcanic eruption as they make their way to a location closer to watch the fresh volcano eruption near Grindavik, Reykjanes, Iceland, 17 July 2025. According to the Icelandic Meteorological Office, a magma flow has begun at the Sundhnuk crater range on 16 July. (Photo by Jakob Vegerfors/EPA)

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.

Local villagers ride a local coal powered steam train on March 27, 2015 at a station in the town of Shixi , Sichuan Province, in Southern China. While China boasts the world's most extensive high-speed rail infrastructure with over 16,000 kilometers of track, the Shixi-Bagou railway is still a primary connection for local villagers between towns and is kept alive by tourist cars carrying passengers for ten times the price. The rail line came into service in the late 1950s and the train was initially used to transport coal from a now-shuttered mine before passenger carriages were added. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)