Participants wearing colorful costumes take part in the Flowers Parade of the 151th annual Carnival of Nice, in Nice, France, 20 March 2024. The annual Carnival of Nice run from 17 February to 03 March 2024, and the main theme will be “King of Pop Culture”. (Photo by Sebastien Nogier/EPA)

A tourist cools off in front of a misting fan near a venue of the Hozuki-Ichi (Japanese lantern plant fair), at Sensoji temple, in Tokyo, Japan, on July 10, 2025. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

Superstar Taylor Swift revealed the album cover and artwork for her highly anticipated 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl”, on Wednesday, August 13, 2025. (Photo by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott)

Canadian singer-songwriter and dancer Tate McRae arrives at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, September 7, 2025, at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Photo)

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.

World Champion Matthias Dolderer of Germany flies over the Horseshoe Bend near Lake Powell in Page, United States during the transfer flight from Indianapolis to Las Vegas to prior the final stage of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship on October 12, 2016. (Photo by Predrag Vuckovic/AFP Photo)

Photographer Lori Nix hand-crafted dioramas are fictional scenes of a post-apocalyptic world in which plants and decay reclaim both grand and mundane structures. Each structure is built in Nix's living room and can take over half a year to build. Photo: Library, 2007. Photographer Lori Nix says this is the most popular image she has made for this project that she calls “The City”. (Photo by Lori Nix)

In this March 15, 2012 file photo, a Chinese woman poses for photos near a sculpture depicting a Chinese yuan note at an art district in Beijing, China. China devalued its tightly controlled currency on Tuesday, August 11,2015, following a slump in trade, triggering the yuan's biggest one-day decline in a decade. The central bank said the yuan's 1.3 percent fall was due to a change aimed at making its exchange rate controls more market-oriented. But any change raises the risk of tensions with China's trading partners. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)