If acting is in your blood then next time an audition is scheduled in the Shreveport/Bossier area, You owe it to yourself to show up and shine as this story of “Flo” the bubbly Progressive Insurance Girl tells how she got her big break…with a simple audition. Shreveport is a melting pot of growing actors.
When it comes to great characters from famous television commercials, the most memorable appear no more: 1997 Taco Bell’s talking Chihuahua (“¡Yo Quiero Taco Bell!”); 1989 LiteCall’s Mrs. Fletcher (“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”); and 1984 Wendy’s Clara Peller (“Where’s the beef?”).
She’s a bundle of energetic contradictions, bursting here, retracting there. Her expressions blink and change like a neon sign. Her eyes are popping globes. And she just sold you a bunch of car insurance.
She’s the one who makes viewers either want to befriend her, date her or buy her insurance. She may be the most animated real-life character on television since Lucy.
Flo is her name. She’s the spokeswoman for Progressive Auto Insurance, lighting up televisions in a series of commercials in which her perky cashier pitches the money-saving merits of Progressive to customers.
However, the actress who plays Flo has her own name: Stephanie Courtney of Stoney Point, NY.
Stephanie Courtney, an actress, stand-up comic and member of acclaimed improvisational group, The Groundlings, has made Flo famous worldwide. This makes worthwhile the two hours she spends in fat, upholstered chairs in the studio’s make-up and hair department, morphing into Flo. That big-hair bubble do of the ’60s, flame-red lipstick, and banjo-eyed enthusiasm, leave the viewer wishing to immediately hook onto another Progressive Flo commercial; they’re as addictive as chain smoking, only without the cigarette.
Stephanie also has recurring roles as one of the receptionists on AMC’s hit Mad Men; Showtime’s The United States of Tara; and as cousin Gayla in the movie The Heartbreak Kid.
“It’s so weird,” says Stephanie Courtney, the actress who plays Flo.
Stephanie Courtney, 38, has been playing Flo for about a year, and was recently signed to do 12 more Progressive ads. Which makes her the face and voice of Progressive, a peer of the Geico gecko (do they ever hang out, compare rates?) and the Verizon guy. She follows in a heady tradition of corporate mascots, from Palmolive’s Madge to Tony the Tiger.
It began with a simple audition for a commercial last fall. She showed up in a polo shirt and ponytail. She did some improvisation.
“They wanted someone with a lot of personality,” Stephanie says by phone from her Los Angeles home.
They liked her and signed her. Then, the look. That look.
They cut her hair, gave her bangs. They subjected her to two hours of hair and make-up.
“They tease my hair, spray it and stick the headband in it,” Courtney explains.
“And the makeup is like painting a portrait on my face,” she says, laughing. “It’s insane. It totally changes things on my face. It’s like having a mask on.”
Courtney has popped up in the movies “The Heartbreak Kid” and “Blades of Glory,” and was one of four leads in the smart adult comedy “Melvin Goes to Dinner,” which won the audience award at South by Southwest in 2003. She also has a recurring role as a gossipy switchboard operator on the hit show “Mad Men.” And you can see her doing yoga in a new Glade commercial.
“It’s me at my silliest,” she says. “You start off with a script, but at the end they usually let me put a little zinger in there. We put a little mustard on it. That’s when it gets fun.
Though Courtney is engaged to a sixth-grade teacher, Flo appears alluringly single. So pine away, in the same brunette-crush way you did with Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island” and Velma on “Scooby-Doo.”
Too bad guys. You had to be told sooner or later.
