Subway passengers walk past bronze sculptures representing the Soviet people at the Ploshchad Revolyutsii metro station in Moscow, on November 14, 2012. The station was opened in 1938. (Photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/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.

Femen activists with their bare chests reading “Fascists out of ballot boxes” are held back by Catalan regional police forces Mossos d'Esquadra as they protest against far-right Vox party candidates in Barcelona during regional elections in Catalonia on February 14, 2021. Catalonia is voting in an election overshadowed by the pandemic which Madrid hopes will unseat the region's ruling separatists more than three years after a failed bid to break away from Spain. (Photo by Lluis Gene/AFP Photo/Profimedia)

“Mayweather City” cake is held by performers at Floyd Mayweather’s exclusive red carpet birthday bash at Gabriel South Beach on February 24, 2022 in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo by MediaPunch/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A participant at London Pride 2022 parade takes a mocking selfie next to Christian extremists protesting the parade in Piccadilly on July 2, 2022. (Photo by Vuk Valcic/ZUMA Press Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Members of the Australian cabaret & circus troupe Briefs cool down in a fountain on the Southbank in London, Tuesday, July 19, 2022. Britain shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered Tuesday, with a provisional reading of 39.1 degrees Celsius (102.4 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the country's weather office – and the heat was only expected to rise. (Photo by Frank Augstein/AP Photo)

The Zammitt Family. “A portrait of the Zammitt family at their western Sydney home, with their dogs, Benji and Beau. Brian Zammitt (second from left) is the head of his booming family business, BAMS Hygiene Management, one of Australia’s leading deep cleaning companies, which specialises in disinfecting workplaces and locations contaminated with Covid-19. His wife, Sandra, and daughters Natalie and Louisa all play key frontline roles in the business”. (Photo by John Janson-Moore/Australia’s National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022)