Commuters interact with an elephant as he rests in a public road ahead of the annual Perahera festival of the historic Gangaramaya Temple in Colombo on February 18, 2019. Some 50 elephants, most of them from the central area of Kandy along with thousands of traditional drummers, dancers, and monks have gathered in the Sri Lankan capital to participate in the city's biggest two-day annual Buddhist Navam procession, scheduled for February 18-19. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP Photo)

A large stainless steel shovel lies on top of steamed crabs at the A.E. Phillips & Son Inc. crab picking house on Hooper's Island in Fishing Creek, Maryland August 26, 2015. Workers speed through the lump and back fin meat inside the crabs while leaving the more tedious task of picking the claws to others. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

A man jokingly poses with a new installation of British graffiti artist Banksy's art in New York, October 20, 2013. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

Filipino boys play basketball at an improvised court hooked on multi-layered tombs at a public cemetery in Navotas, north of Manila, Philippines on Thursday Oct. 31, 2013. Filipinos are expected to flock to cemeteries on November 1 to remember their dead as they observe All Saints Day in this predominantly Roman Catholic country. (Photo by Aaron Favila/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.

Gertrude “Billie” Murphy, 22, is brought in for questioning in the murder case of Michael Stopec, who was shot and killed in an apartment hotel, circa July 1927. Murphy had been friends of the married Stopec and his suspected killer Henry Guardino, 31. It is said that Stopec and Guardino were “bitter rivals for the favor of Billie” and that Murphy had tired of Guardino and was going to stay with Stopec. Murphy was also married to a man in the Joliet penitentiary. (Photo by Chicago Herald & Examiner Historical Photo)

A dog sits in the shade of a mangrove tree as a woman uses a fork to dig for shellfish on the reef-mud flats of a lagoon located at South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati May 23, 2013. Kiribati consists of a chain of 33 atolls and islands that stand just metres above sea level, spread over a huge expanse of otherwise empty ocean. With surrounding sea levels rising, Kiribati President Anote Tong has predicted his country will likely become uninhabitable in 30-60 years because of inundation and contamination of its freshwater supplies. (Photo by David Gray/Reuters)

A visitor looks at pictures of French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), on July 1, 2013 during the 44thd annual Rencontres d'Arles photography festival in Arles, southern France. The event runs until September 22. (Photo by Boris Horvat/AFP Photo)