A Syrian rebel walks past Sham 2, a homemade armored vehicle, in Bishqatin, Syria, on December 8, 2012. From a distance it looks rather like a big rusty metal box but closer inspection reveals a homemade armored vehicle waiting to be deployed. Sham II, named after ancient Syria, is built from the chassis of a car and touted by rebels as “100 percent made in Syria”. (Photo by Herve Bar/AFP Photo)

Flemish Minister President Jan Jambon pictured in the Danish pavilion during the official opening of the Belgian pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale – La Biennale di Venezia, International Art Exhibition, Thursday 21 April 2022, in Venice, Italy, Thursday 21 April 2022. Belgian artist Alys will present “The Nature of the Game”, an exhibition that will reveal a selection of films and a series of paintings. (Photo by James Arthur Gekiere/Belga Mag/Belga via AFP Photo)

Anything not recycled in industry is sold on stalls along the neighbouring highway in Sitakunda Beach, Bangladesh, February 2012. A look inside Bangladesh’s ship breaking yards reveal the brutal conditions workers are subjected to everyday. (Photo by Jan Møller Hansen/Barcroft Images)

A group of San Bushmen from the Khomani San community practice their hunter-gatherer craft in the Southern Kalahari desert on October 15, 2009 in the Kalahari, South Africa. One of the largest studies of African genetics by an international team from the University of Pennsylvania, published in April 2009, revealed that the San of Southern Africa are the most genetically diverse on earth, and that the San homeland could be the spot where modern humanity began. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Tattoo devotee Edyta shows off her body art during The Tattoo Jam Festival on August 5, 2011 in Doncaster, England. The Tattoo Jam Festival is Britain's biggest gathering of tattoo professionals and skin art devotees. The event hosts over 300 artists working in the exhibition hall of Doncaster Racecourse revealing their latest designs and techniques. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

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.

Shiite Muslims gather, albeit in fewer numbers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, at the Imam Ali shrine in the central Iraqi holy city of Najaf late on May 16, 2020, to mark Lailat al-Qadr, a night in the holy month of Ramadan during which the Koran was first revealed to the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century. Worshippers placed copies of the Koran on their heads to convey veneration during the overnight prayers in a centuries-old ritual, as they pleaded to God to rid them of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Haidar Hamdani/AFP Photo)

Guest gather in the street as the wait to attend the annual New York City Diner en Blanc, August 22, 2017 held this year at the plaza at Lincoln Center. The Diner en Blanc, the worlds only viral culinary event, a chic secret pop-up style picnic from France, the outdoor site – always a landmark location – is revealed at the last-minute. Guests are asked to dress entirely in elegant white, bring a picnic basket of food, fine china and silverware, white tablecloths, table and chairs. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP Photo)