Alexa Grasso, left, is hit by Valentina Shevchenko during a UFC 285 mixed martial arts flyweight title bout Saturday, March 4, 2023, in Las Vegas. (Photo by David Becker/AP Photo)

A family wearing traditional Japanese clothing posed for a photograph during spring season in one of the garden in Kiyomizu dera, Kyoto prefecture, Japan on March 30, 2018. (Photo by Richard Atrero de Guzman/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

(From front to back) Carson, Rosie and Charlie Surfs Up compete during the World Dog Surfing Championships in Pacifica, California, on August 5, 2023. The event helps local charities raise money by sponsoring a contestant or a team, with a portion of the proceeds going to dog, environmental, and surfing nonprofit organizations. (Photo by Josh Edelson/AFP Photo)

Vincent Yu is a multiple award winner who won Honorable Mention in the 2013 Photographer of the Year category for Pictures of the Year International. Photo: A statue of Hotei Buddha sits in the debris in the tsunami-destroyed town of Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, northern Japan Friday, April 1, 2011. (Photo by Vincent Yu/AP 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 participant dressed up in a costume attends the 2021 Prague Comic Con in Prague, Czech Republic, October 16, 2021. (Photo by David W. Cerny/Reuters)

In this April 1, 2002, file photo, Mike Cole, of Jenkintown, Pa., right, performs a kick-flip over a trash can with his skateboard as tourists pose for photos in front of artist Robert Indiana's sculpture in John F. Kennedy Plaza, also known as Love Park, in Philadelphia. Granite slabs from Philadelphia's famed Love Park, a skateboarding mecca though for a long stretch an illegal one, are being shipped in 2017 to the city of Malmo, Sweden, nearly 4,000 miles away, for use in construction of a skate park there. (Photo by Douglas Bovitt/AP Photo)

Model Ashley Graham is seen walking in Soho on May 9, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Raymond Hall/GC Images)