An actor holds a fake baby while waiting for the Wintershall Nativity play dress rehearsal to begin at Wintersall Estate on December 12, 2021 in Guildford, England. The Nativity play, which tells the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, has been performed annually since 1990 over the Christmas period by the Wintershall players. (Photo by Hollie Adams/Getty Images)

In this April 14, 2014 file photo, Hamamatou Harouna, 10, who lost the use of her legs to polio, crawls to the restroom on the grounds of the Catholic Church where she and hundreds of others found refuge after fleeing violence in her village, in Carnot, Central African Republic. Health authorities on Tuesday, August 25, 2020 are expected to declare the African continent free of the wild poliovirus after decades of effort, though cases of vaccine-derived polio are still sparking outbreaks of the paralyzing disease in more than a dozen countries. (Photo by Jerome Delay/AP Photo/File)

Swedish singer Cornelia Jakobs performs after winning the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool, Britain on May 13, 2023. (Photo by Phil Noble/Reuters)

A motorcyclist carries three young woman as he performs a wheelie on his motorbike during an exhibition in the Chapellin neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, June 12, 2022. (Photo by Matias Delacroix/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.

Valery Bystritskii, 10, gets a fellow student into a lock at Bunny's Gym in July 2015 in Winchester, Tennessee. (Photo by Mike Saliba/Barcroft USA)

A girl is seen in a bakery in the old walled town of Harar in eastern Ethiopia, May 19, 2015. Daily life of people in Ethiopia, where elections are held this weekend, is portrayed in the east African nation's churches and mosques, coffee shops and markets, both in the capital Addis Ababa and the walled town of Harar in the east. Ethiopia, home to nearly 100 million people, holds the first poll on Sunday since long-serving leader Meles Zenawi died in 2012. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Reuters)