Soldiers of the French Air and Space Force who took part in the Skyros Operation get ready prior to the annual Bastille Day military parade on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris on July 14, 2021. (Photo by Ludovic Marin/AFP Photo)

The Zammitt Family. “A portrait of the Zammitt family at their western Sydney home, with their dogs, Benji and Beau. Brian Zammitt (second from left) is the head of his booming family business, BAMS Hygiene Management, one of Australia’s leading deep cleaning companies, which specialises in disinfecting workplaces and locations contaminated with Covid-19. His wife, Sandra, and daughters Natalie and Louisa all play key frontline roles in the business”. (Photo by John Janson-Moore/Australia’s National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022)

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.

People look at a dead pilot whale on a beach in Panadura on November 3, 2020. Rescuers and volunteers were racing since November 2 to save about 100 pilot whales stranded on Sri Lanka's western coast in the island nation's biggest-ever mass beaching. (Photo by Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP Photo)

Men and children gather as a camel is being slaughtered in celebration of Eid al-Adha, in Peshawar, Pakistan on August 12, 2019. (Photo by Fayaz Aziz/Reuters)

A model presents a creation from the Tom Ford Spring/Summer 2023 collection during New York Fashion Week in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., September 14, 2022. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Individuals and populations student winner. Limbing in the Tropics, photographed in Manaus, Brazil. While walking in the Amazon rainforest looking for bat roosts to set up mist nets to capture bats for scientific research, a faint and almost imperceptible noise suddenly caught this photographer’s attention. An anteater was climbing with exceptional ability in a tangled mess of branches and lianas. (Photo by Adrià López Baucells/University of Lisbon/British Ecological Society)