People swing dance while participating in the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island, Brookly, New York City, U.S., June 22, 2024. (Photo by Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)

Spanish journalist and writer Noemi Casquet attends the 26th Malaga Film Festival closing ceremony at the Cervantes Theater on March 18, 2023 in Malaga, Spain. (Photo by Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images)

UK Love Island's Matilda Draper in the first decade of August 2024 left little to the imagination in plunging dress. (Photo by Instagram)

Drag Queen Gaypin (R) and her friends attend the three day RuPaul's DragCon, which is billed as the “first convention celebrating drag, queer culture, & self-expression” at the Convention Center in Los Angeles, California on May 25, 2019. (Photo by Mark Ralston/AFP Photo)

Costumed revellers perform in the parade during the Notting Hill Carnival in London, Monday, August 27, 2018. The carnival has been held every year since 1966 and one of the largest festival celebrations of its kind in Europe. (Photo by Tim Ireland/AP Photo)

Workers clean the premises of Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, December 16, 2020. The Pashupatinath Temple in Nepal reopened for devotees on Wednesday morning, almost eight months after it was shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

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.

Francisco da Silva Vale, 61, cools off fish with ice produced on solar-powered ice machines at Vila Nova do Amana community in the Sustainable Development Reserve, in Amazonas state, Brazil, September 23, 2015. Three solar-powered machines, are producing about ninety kilos of ice per day, in a region with poor access to electric energy, which used to be produced only with diesel oil, in the Amazon rain forest. (Photo by Bruno Kelly/Reuters)