What To Know
- Lori Petty shared fond and adventurous memories from filming Point Break.
- She revealed the dangers of filming surf scenes in the pipeline.
- Petty described Patrick Swayze’s daredevil spirit, noting his love for skydiving before work.
Lori Petty just shared unexpected behind-the-scenes details from the set of Point Break with Patrick Swayze, 35 years after the movie premiered.
In an interview with People published on August 2, Petty opened up about the 1991 heist film. “It was a dream, for real. It was so much fun,” the actress, 62, recalled. “Come on, it was me and 20 wet dudes. It was just so much fun just playing football and training and surfing and kissing. It was just a blast.”
The action-crime thriller follows an FBI agent, Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), who goes undercover to catch a gang of surfers who are also bank robbers. Swayze played Bodhi, the surfer-robbers’ leader, while Petty played a local surfer, Tyler, who teaches Johnny how to surf and becomes a romantic interest.
According to Petty, the most difficult part of filming Point Break was “having your surfboard tied to the bottom of the ocean in pipeline.”
“We had no business in the pipeline,” she confessed. “You put goofy actors strapped to a board in the pipeline. So we had indigenous men from Hawaii who would tread water for hours being our bodyguards in case we got smashed off of our boards and they had to save us. We got saved a lot. We weren’t scared. We were young and happy and daredevils, and it was wonderful.”
Petty also detailed crashing at a house the Red Hot Chili Peppers rented for the movie. “We were just a pile of wet, dirty people in this house,” she shared. “Then we’d go down and go surfing every morning, like four or five in the morning.”
Additionally, the Orange Is the New Black star revealed that Swayze — who died at 57 in 2009, following a battle with pancreatic cancer — often went skydiving before work against the studio’s wishes.
“He loved it. He loved riding motorcycles. He loved skydiving. He loved dancing. He loved anything he could do with his body,” Petty recalled. “He was doing ballet in the air. That was really him. So he was someone who just loved to push himself at whatever he did and take it as far as he could. And he was just sweet as pie, and he smelled so good all the time.”
Aside from Petty, Swayze, and Reeves, Point Break starred Gary Busey, John C. McGinley, James Le Gros, Anthony Kiedis, BoJesse Christopher, and more. A remake was released in 2015, starring Edgar Ramírez as Bodhi, Luke Bracey as Utah, and Teresa Palmer as Samsara, Tyler’s renamed counterpart.
Point Break (1991), streaming on Tubi, YouTube, Xumo Play, Pluto TV, Sling TV, The Roku Channel, AMC+, Philo, Plex, and Peacock