21st annual Hollywood Vanity Fair cover by Annie Leibovitz

For the 21st annual Hollywood cover, Annie Leibovitz captured an intimate portrait of the year’s most celebrated actors. The iconic three-panel foldout features 10 actors who had noteworthy performances over the past year: Amy Adams (Big Eyes), Channing Tatum (Foxcatcher), Reese Witherspoon (Wild), Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything), Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), David Oyelowo (Selma), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game), Sienna Miller (American Sniper), Oscar Isaac (A Most Violent Year), and Miles Teller (Whiplash). The men wear bespoke white-tie, while the women channel Old Hollywood glamour in slinky gold and red. Taking advantage of Amy Adams’s years of dance training for the panel’s front panel, Leibovitz had Channing Tatum lift her up on his shoulder, which prompted Tatum to joke, “I’m wearing Amy Adams.” “We made the picture in the same studio where we did the first Hollywood cover,” Leibovitz, who shot the first Hollywood Issue cover in 1995 and all but three times since, tells West Coast editor Krista Smith. “It looks fairly simple, but in fact it was difficult to shoot. We choreographed it over two days. Usually you shoot from fairly far away, but we wanted to get really close to the actors. We made an effort to create a feeling of intimacy. I pushed into them, shooting to the left and then the right, coming in as tight as I could. It was hair-raising, at least for me.” Amy Adams recently earned her second Golden Globe for her performance as painter Margaret Keane in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes. Channing Tatum revealed his dramatic chops as Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz in Foxcatcher. Reese Witherspoon received her second best-actress Oscar nomination for her spectacular performance in Wild. She served as a producer on that film, as well as on the Oscar-nominated Gone Girl. Eddie Redmayne’s stunning portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything recently won him an Oscar nomination. Benedict Cumberbatch cracks the enigma code—and earns an Oscar nomination doing it—as computer scientist Alan Turing in The Imitation Game. Golden Globe nominee David Oyelowo perfectly conjured Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. Sienna Miller marks a grand return to American cinema with her heartbreaking performance as Bradley Cooper’s wife in American Sniper. Oscar Isaac gives a tour de force performance in A Most Violent Year. Miles Teller stars in Whiplash, which won the Audience and Grand Jury Prizes at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. The March issue of Vanity Fair will be available in New [...]