An actress performs in a puppet theater show at an UNRWA school in Burj al-Barajneh in Beirut May 14, 2015. The Arab Puppet Theatre Foundation (APTF) is touring the 68 schools of the UN refugee agency's UNRWA and performs for all 39,000 Palestinian students in Lebanon, in a project with UNICEF and UNRWA. (Photo by Mohamed Azakir/Reuters)

Fr Pierre Pepper (C) warms up before his amateur boxing match in the town of Banagher in County Offaly March 15, 2015. Fr Pepper has spent the last two months training for an amateur boxing match to raise proceeds for charity. (Photo by Cathal McNaughton/Reuters)

Meghan Puhr participates in a virtual realty presentation during an Intel news conference before CES International, Wednesday, January 4, 2017, in Las Vegas. (Photo by John Locher/AP Photo)

Female Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters watch on as they release a bear into the wild in the Gara Mountains near the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk on March 4, 2018, after Iraqi Kurdish Animal rights activists from a local NGO rescued it from a private home. (Photo by Safin Hamed/AFP Photo)

Britain Horse Racing, Royal Ascot, Ascot Racecourse on June 17, 2016. Chelsea pensioners with a racegoer posing between them. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters/Livepic)

«Female Boxers», 2024. Julia Fullerton-Batten is a fine art photographer renowned for her cinematic visual storytelling. Her large-scale projects are based around specific themes, each image embellishing her subject matter in a series of thought-provoking “stories” using staged tableaux and sophisticated lighting techniques. (Photo by Julia Fullerton-Batten)

Juleny Favela – Que Nadie Sepa mi Sufrir. Argentine song from 1936 with Peruvian waltz rhythm by Argentinan guitarist Angel Cabral.

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.