A seal infront of a passing cruise ship on the shore between Sandhaven village and Fraserburgh in Scotland in August 2023. (Photo by Mark Grant/Caters News Agency)

Performers wearing traditional Zulu attire take part in the parade during the 112th African National Congress (ANC) Anniversary rally in Mbombela on January 13, 2024. (Photo by Phill Magakoe/AFP Photo)

Medical staff react outside Queen Elizabeth Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Birmingham, Britain, April 23, 2020. (Photo by Carl Recine/Reuters)

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 picture of Moon Ji-sung, a high school student who died in the Sewol ferry disaster, hangs in her room in Ansan April 7, 2015. Her dream was to be a flight attendant. Nearly a year after the Sewol ferry sank on April 16, 2014, with the death of 250 students, some families keep their children’s bedrooms intact to remember and honour their loved ones. More than 300 people, most of them students and teachers from Danwon High School, are dead, or missing and presumed dead, after the Sewol ferry sank on a routine trip from the port of Incheon, near Seoul, to the holiday island of Jeju. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

A instructor (2nd L) from the Philippine Mermaid Swimming Academy assists participants of a monofin swimming summer workshop as they practise floating in the water of a private pool in Paranaque city, metro Manila April 5, 2014. The Philippine Mermaid Swimming Academy workshops, which were originally conducted on the beaches of Boracay Island, central Philippines, currently cost 1,800 pesos per person ($40) for a two-hour session. (Photo by Romeo Ranoco/Reuters)

Police officers take cover as they clash with protesters after an officer shot and killed a black man in Brooklyn Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota on April 11,2021. Protests broke out April 11, 2021 night after US police fatally shot a young Black man in a suburb of Minneapolis – where a former police officer is currently on trial for the murder of George Floyd. Hundreds of people gathered outside the police station in Brooklyn Center, northwest of Minneapolis. Police fired teargas and flash bangs at the demonstrators, according to an AFP videojournalist at the scene. (Photo by Kerem Yucel/AFP Photo)

The sun begins to set over this rusty beachside mansion that has been left abandoned for more than 25 years in Thailand, June 2017. A deserted beachside mansion in southern Thailand has retained its beauty – despite no one living there for more than 25 years. In June this year abandoned photographer, Dax Ward, ventured to the Prachuap Khiri-Khan Province to capture the haunting attraction on camera. (Photo by Dax Ward/Barcroft Images)