Born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Harlow was inspired to work in film-making after seeing the 1933 film King Kong as a child. He later explained that he spent "hours in the basement creating things and I knew I wanted to make characters. I just didn't know what it was at the time, that makeup was the way to do that."[1] After graduating from high school he moved to New York City to attend the School of Visual Arts, where he majored in animation.[2]
Harlow worked together with actor Johnny Depp on several films, such as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Alice in Wonderland. While they were both working on The Rum Diary in Puerto Rico, they found a photograph of a Native American which they developed into the makeup design used on Tonto as played by Depp in the 2013 film The Lone Ranger. They had also used it to encourage Walt Disney Studios into producing the film, as at the time that they discovered the image, the film was close to being dropped.[1] In the final design of Tonto, some eight prosthetics were created by Harlow for Depp and eighteen overlapping prosthetics when the actor played the older version of the character.[1]
Awards
In 2008, Harlow was nominated with Debbie Zoller, Brian Penikas, and Jake Garber for an Emmy Award for Prosthetic Makeup For A Series, Miniseries, Movie Or A Special for their work on the Mad Menseason one episode "Nixon vs. Kennedy".[3]
