Shalom Harlow
Runways came first, and they remain the main body of work. Shalom Harlow is a Canadian model who began in the early 1990s and had reached supermodel status by the end of the decade; Forbes ranked her thirteenth on its 2007 list of the world's top-earning supermodels. She also hosted MTV's House of Style alongside Amber Valletta, which is where most people who do not follow fashion first heard her speak.
The film career sits beside that rather than replacing it, and it is honest to say it is a small one, concentrated in a stretch between 1997 and 2006. She played Sonya in In & Out, Jade in Head Over Heels, Colleen in Vanilla Sky, Nancy in The Salton Sea, Judy Green in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Joan in Melinda and Melinda and Paisley Porter in Game 6, plus Melissa Greenfield in the 2004 series The Jury. Casting directors mostly wanted the same thing from her, a poised woman at the edge of the frame, and she supplied it without visible strain.
She appears as herself in the 2013 documentary Bettie Page Reveals All. The screen record here is genuinely thin, and it should be read as a sideline to a modelling career that film credits cannot measure.
Movies (8)
TV (1)
Where to start with Shalom Harlow
Her widest-seen credit, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, is a fair sample of what she was cast to do: she is glossy, dry and used as texture in a very successful romantic comedy.
In & Out is the better film and the earlier one, a sharp studio comedy where her fashion-world persona is the joke rather than the decoration.
For anything closer to acting, The Salton Sea is the pick, a nasty little neo-noir that gives her something to play, and Melinda and Melinda puts her in a talkier ensemble. Vanilla Sky uses her briefly in a film with a lot going on around her.
Bettie Page Reveals All is the one where she appears as herself, and it is the credit closest to the career that made her famous.