The 2012 VANITY FAIR: Hollywood Portfolio.

Byline: Portraits by ANNIE LEIBOVITZ, DAVID BAILEY, TOM MUNRO, TERRY RICHARDSON, NORMAN JEAN ROY, and other top photographers!

The 2012 VANITY FAIR

HOLLYWOOD PORTFOLIO

Including STEVEN SPIELBERG, GEORGE CLOONEY, CHARLIZE THERON, KIRSTEN DUNST, GLENN CLOSE, MICHAEL FASSBENDER, JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT, VIOLA DAVIS, SETH ROGEN, and many more!

Plus: KILLER LINES, OSCAR CRED, THE JAMES EARL JONES MATRIX, and much more!

THE ARTIST

JEAN DUJARDIN, ACTOR, and BARANICE BEJO, ACTRESS

How the French made a great American movie: By making it silent, obviating the need for dialect coaches and intensive Streep-work ... and by adding in some great American mugs, among them John Goodman's, Missi Pyle's, and James Cromwell's. Backstory: Writer-director Michel Hazanavicius had already made two slight but fun spy-movie pastiches in France with Dujardin in the James Bond/Austin Powers role; this time, he aimed more for homage than for pastiche. Antecedents: Singin' in the Rain, A Star Is Born, Silent Movie. Degrees of separation from this year's honorary Oscar recipient James Earl Jones: FiveDujardin co-starred in Little White Lies with Marion Cotillard, who co-starred in Midnight in Paris with Owen Wilson, who co-starred in The Royal Tenenbaums with Danny Glover, who co-starred in The Color Purple with Whoopi Goldberg, who, alongside Jones, supplied her voice to The Lion King.

Photographed by TOM MUNRO in New York City.

GLENN CLOSE

ACTRESS, PRODUCER, CO-SCREENWRITER, ALBERT NOBBS

Prior Oscar cred: Five nominations. No wins yet. But Close's three Emmys and three Tonys are nothing to sneeze at. Sexual politics: She had her film breakthrough in The World According to Garp playing a proto-feminist single mom. In her latest, Close morphs into another woman who defies the sexual mores of her era (late 19th century) by living as a man. Key line: Spoken by Dr. Holloran (Brendan Gleeson), who has learned Nobbs's secret: "Dear Jesus, I don't know what makes people live such miserable lives." Persistence: In 1982, Close first played the character at the …