A man transports a car on a horse cart to a repair shop along a street in Amritsar on May 6, 2021. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP 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.

A municipality worker in a protective suit feeds street cats at Sultanahmet Square, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Istanbul, Turkey, April 9, 2020. (Photo by Umit Bektas/Reuters)

Santa Claus wears a mask as he pushes a sleigh full of curbside grocery orders to an Aldi customer at a parking lot in Palatine, Ill., Saturday, December 19, 2020. For this weekend only, Santa Claus is delivering groceries to Aldi customers in Palatine and several other towns in the Chicago area. (Photo by Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo)

A demonstrator smashes a shop window during a protest condemning the arrest of rap singer Pablo Hasél in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, February 20, 2021. A fifth night of peaceful protests to denounce the imprisonment of a Spanish rap artist once more devolved into clashes between police and fringe group members who set up street barricades and smashed storefront windows in Barcelona. (Photo by Joan Mateu/AP Photo)

Sultan, a famous captive fennec that is displayed tied on a rope in front of a tourist shop, is the main attraction in the souk of Douz, a desert town in Tunisia. By the display of such a charismatic animal, tourists are often lured to buy things or pay for pictures. On inquiry, although Sultan has been caught as a pup in the wild, the owners of the shop reassure the foreigners stating that the animal is ‘domestic’. (Photo by Bruno D’Amicis/Fritz Pölking Prize/GDT EWPY 2015)

A man designs a face mask with the photograph of a customer printed on it, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at a photo studio in Gandhinagar, India, May 27, 2020. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

Buddhist believers wearing faces masks to help protect against the spread of the new coronavirus wait to attend a service to pray for overcoming the COVID-19 outbreak and to celebrate Buddha's birthday at the Chogyesa temple in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 30, 2020. (Photo by Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo)