A man sits at the back of his car in the city centre of Yangon on September 15, 2023. (Photo by Sai Aung Main/AFP Photo)

People participate in the annual “No Pants Subway Ride” in New York City, U.S., January 12, 2020. (Photo by Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

A passenger not wearing pants sits in a subway train during the “No Pants Subway Ride” in Prague, Czech Republic, January 10, 2016. The event is an annual flash mob and occurs in different cities around the world in January, according to its organisers. (Photo by David W. Cerny/Reuters)

A woman holds a parasol as she stands in a field of fireweed, or Kochia scoparia, on a sunny autumn day at the Hitachi Seaside Park in Hitachi, north of Tokyo, October 26, 2015. Fireweed is a grass bush that takes on a bright red colour in autumn. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Eghy (L) uses his makeshift snorkel as his colleague lifts up green mussels to their boat in Jakarta Bay, Indonesia, April 20, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/Beawiharta)

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.

“The Blitz (from German, “Lightning”) was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed. More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged, and more than 40,000 civilians were killed, half of them in London”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A fireman attempts to check the flames from a gas explosion, after an air raid in Central London the previous night. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images). 1940

Lenka Tanner is pictured in Nottingham, United Kingdom on March 11, 2015. She starred in the Kuoni advert, Run on Water, advertising luxury holidays. She has set up her own synchronised swimming team called AquaStars. Tanner was born in Slovakia and starting synchronised swimming at the age of six. (Photo by Lucy Ray/The Guardian)