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.

Residents wade through the flood brought by typhoon Vamco in Manila, the Philippines, on November 12, 2020. Typhoon Vamco, the third powerful cyclone to batter the Philippines in 11 days, made landfall on Wednesday night, unleashed fierce winds and intense rains that triggered landslide, rockslide and flash floods. (Photo by Rouelle Umali/Xinhua News Agency)

A South African police officer speaks to residents of the densely populated Alexandra township east of Johannesburg Friday, March 27, 2020. (Photo by Jerome Delay/AP Photo)

Tourists wear protective masks in Sanur, Bali, Indonesia, 15 March 2020. Indonesia has around 80 active cases of Covid-19. More than 70,000 people worldwide have recovered from coronavirus, nearly half of the total infections recorded since the outbreak began. (Photo by Made Nagi/EPA/EFE)

“The last known individual of the subspecies was a male named Lonesome George (Spanish: El Solitario Jorge/George), who died on 24 June 2012. In his last years, he was known as the rarest creature in the world. George served as a potent symbol for conservation efforts in the Galápagos and internationally”. – Wikipedia. (Photo by Rodrigo Buendia/AFP)

A couple looks at their flooded street from behind their home's window in La Plata, in Argentina's Buenos Aires province, where at least 35 people were killed by flooding overnight, on April 3, 2013. (Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press)

A volunteer operates a remote controlled disinfection robot to disinfect a residental area amid the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on March 16, 2020. China tightened quarantine measures for international arrivals on March 16 as the country worries about a rise in imported cases of the deadly coronavirus and anger rages online at how Europe and the United States are handling the pandemic. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)

A mother takes a selfie while breastfeeding her baby at the “Hakab Na 2018”, an event held in celebration of National Breastfeeding Awareness Month at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City, Philippines on Sunday, August 5, 2018. Now on its sixth year, the event is a gathering of families, lactation experts, peer counselors and breastfeeding advocacy supporters and was aimed at promoting the importance of providing support to breastfeeding mothers. (Photo by Avito C. Dalan/PNA Photo)