Members of the Albert Battery perform a gun salute during the Anzac Day dawn service held by the Currumbin RSL on the Gold Coast in Currumbin, Australia, 25 April 2016. The Anzac day marks the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) troops at Gallipoli in what is today Turkey during WWI. World War One, also called the Great War, according to official statistics cost more than 37 million military and civilian casualties between 1914 and 1918. (Photo by Glenn Hunt/EPA)

Performers of circus company Circa perform during a photocall for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on Calton Hill on August 1, 2017 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. (Photo by Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian)

Uniformed participant dance during a mass rally and parade in the capital's main ceremonial square, a day after the ruling party wrapped up its first congress in 36 years by elevating him to party chairman, in Pyongyang, North Korea, May 10, 2016. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/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.

Thomas Thwaites of the United Kingdom accepts the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize in Biology for “creating prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move in the manner of, and spend time roaming the hills in the company of, goats” during the 26th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. September 22, 2016. (Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters)

“Show us our butts! Mucawana tribe – Angola. In Soba village, the Muhacaona (Mucawana) tribe, perhaps the best place i have visited. They use cow dung and fat to make this so nice haircut, and love the beads. They asked me to make pictures of their backs... and butts to see on the camera screen if everything was perfect!”. (Photo and comments by Eric Lafforgue)

Aerobatic pilot Sean D. Tucker flies in the two-seat Oracle Extra airplane over downtown Chicago skyline, Wednesday, June 8, 2016. Tucker will perform before the start of of the America's Cup World Series racing on Saturday and Sunday. (Photo by Kiichiro Sato/AP Photo)

An young Indian Jain devotee dressed as Lord Krishna participates in a religious rally organised on the occasion of Mahavir Jayanti in Kolkata on April 2, 2015. The most important religious holiday in Jainism, Mahavir Jayanti celebrates the birth of Mahavira, the last Tirthankara, which is generally accepted as 599 BCE. (Photo by Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP Photo)