People sit near a fully loaded in Madama near the border with Lybia on January 1, 2015. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian paid a surprise visit to northern Niger on January 1, to visit a base being built to combat the growing flow of weapons and jihadists from neighbouring Libya. Le Drian travelled from Chad to Madama, a desert outpost about 100 kilometres from Libya, where he saw in the New Year with troops at a French base. Madama is situated on the route used by jihadists and arms smugglers in southern Libya to reach northern Mali and Niger. (Photo by Dominique Faget/AFP Photo)

A hot air balloon flies close to the ground in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel during an international hot air balloon festival October 14, 2014. (Photo by Nir Elias/Reuters)

Buyan, a male Siberian brown bear, is given a shower by a zoo employee in his enclosure at the Royev Ruchey zoo in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk June 24, 2014. The Siberian city has been experiencing temperatures of around 30 degrees Celsius over the last week. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

A propaganda troupe perform a flag- waving routine outside the central railway station in Pyongyang, North Korea on September 27, 2017. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

A model presents a creation during a hair styling competition in Minsk, Belarus on November 9, 2017. (Photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP Photo)

A masked man in military fatigues brings a blindfolded Irma Krat, arrested and held by pro-Russian protestors before her meeting with journalists near of occupied police station in Slaviansk, Ukraine, 21 April 2014. Pro-Russian activists are demanding broader autonomy from Kiev and closer ties to Russia. Pro-Russian activists continued occupying government, police and other administrative buildings in eastern Ukrainian cities, in defiance of an ultimatum by the Ukrainian government to lay down their weapons. Russia, the United States, the European Union and Ukraine on 17 April had agreed on steps to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine during talks in Geneva, Switzerland. (Photo by Roman Pilipey/EPA)

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.

A supporter of presidential candidate and former chairman of the NATO Military Committee and Czech Army General Petr Pavel hands out leaflets, ahead of a direct presidential election that will start on January 13, in Prague, Czech Republic on January 5, 2023. (Photo by David W. Cerny/Reuters)