A devotee of the Chinese Ban Tha Rue shrine walks with guns pierced through his cheeks during a procession celebrating the annual vegetarian festival in Phuket, Thailand, October 17, 2015. The festival, featuring face-piercing, spirit mediums and strict vegetarianism celebrates the local Chinese community's belief that abstinence from meat and various stimulants during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar will help them obtain good health and peace of mind. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

A Grey Seal pup and it's mother lay in the mud at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust's Donna Nook nature reserve on November 24, 2014 in Grimsby, England. Seal pup numbers have increased on last year with over 800 pups born at the reserve so far. Large bull seals are the first to arrive at the reserve in late October or early November where they will wait for females. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Model Heidi Klum attends her 8th Annual Halloween Party at The Green Door on October 31, 2007 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Charley Gallay/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.

Models Bria Murphy and Shayne Murphy attend the BET AWARDS '14 at Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE on June 29, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Earl Gibson III/Getty Images for BET)

Trainer Lawney Hill poses for a photograph as she wears tights over her face to keep out the cold after taking her horses out on the all-weather gallops in Tetsworth, Britain, March 2, 2018. (Photo by Eddie Keogh/Reuters)

A policeman aims his weapon in Istanbul, Turkey July 16, 2016. Members of Turkey's armed forces said they had taken control of the country Friday as explosions, gunfire and a reported air battle between loyalist forces and coup supporters erupted in the capital. President Erdogan remained defiant and called on people to take to the streets to show support for his embattled government. (Photo by Kemal Aslan/Reuters)

New autopilot features are demonstrated in a Tesla Model S during a Tesla event in Palo Alto, California, 2015. Federal officials say the driver of a Tesla S sports car using the vehicle’s “autopilot” automated driving system has been killed in a collision with a truck, the first U.S. self-driving car fatality. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said preliminary reports indicate the crash occurred when a tractor-trailer made a left turn in front of the Tesla at a highway intersection. Joshua D. Brown, of Canton, Ohio, died in the accident May 7 in Williston, Florida, when his car's cameras failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and didn't automatically activate its brakes, according to government records obtained Thursday. (Photo by Beck Diefenbach/Reuters)