At a “Guts” tour stop in Seattle, American singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo in the first decade of August 2024 basks in the glow her ensemble creates. (Photo by Olivia Rodrigo/Instagram)

Model and Kate Moss lookalike, Denise Ohnona debuts a bespoke duvet-inspired dress designed by Travelodge, which they have dubbed “The 24-hour dress”, in London in the second decade of September 2024. (Photo by David Parry/PA Media Assignments)

A man walks past kelp as he goes for a swim in the Pacific Ocean at La Jolla Shores, Thursday, July 24, 2025, in San Diego. (Photo by Gregory Bull/AP Photo)

Emily Ratajkowski sizzled in a plunging black swimsuit. The model is holidaying in the Adriatic near the Mediterranean Sea in the second decade of July 2025. (Photo by Instagram)

The Spider-Man balloon is inflated on the eve of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade 2025 on Manhattan's upper west side in New York City, U.S., November 26, 2025. (Photo by Kylie Cooper/Reuters)

“Hippo Chase”. As we approached the camp the Selinda Reserve of northern Botswana our boat passed by a hippo resting in the water. I turned around to look back at the boat's wake and saw the hippo charging after us! The hippo must've been tired from an all-nighter because he was angry. He rose way up out of the water three times trying to chase our boat! He was coming at us with such force that he created a wake of his own. Photo location: Selinda Reserve of northern Botswana. (Photo and caption by Curtis Simmons/National Geographic Photo Contest)

American soldiers with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Battle Company, on a battalion-wide mission in the Korengal Valley, looking for caves, weapons caches and known Taliban leaders, 2007. Tanner Stichter tends to Spc. Carl Vandeberge in the bushes moments after Vandeberge was shot in the stomach during a Taliban ambush, which killed one soldier and wounded two others. (Photo by Lynsey Addario)

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.