‘Point Break’ star Lori Petty can still ‘smell the water’ after 35 years

Many surfing scenes were captured at sunrise or sunset.

“We would just wait for that sun to come up or go down,” Petty said. “Then all of a sudden when it’s magic hour, you’ve got about, what, 12 minutes to get your shot.”

The filmmakers also had to be flexible. They could design a shot but sometimes nature had other plans.

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The surfing community has welcomed her, too.

“I’ll see some down here and they’ll freak out,” Petty said. “Or I’ll go into the surf shop just because I know they like it and just talk to them and hang out with them.”

However, one side effect of the film lasting 35 years is Petty can’t always tell if the new generation recognizes her.

“I saw one girl teaching a guy how to pop up on the board like in Point Break and I walked up to them,” Petty said. “I was like, ‘Pop up!’ She looked at me like, ‘Who the hell are you?'”

“A League of Their Own,” Jennifer Lawrence and “NCIS”

Petty’s next role after Point Break was A League of Their Own, a fictional story about the real All American Girls Baseball League during World War II. Petty sees this year’s Women’s Pro Baseball League as a successor.

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Petty said League director Penny Marshall let her shadow her editing the film. During that time, Robert De Niro, who starred in Marshall’s Awakenings, showed them footage of This Boy’s Life and they were all impressed when they saw Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance.

She said she got the same feeling when she watched Jennifer Lawrence’s audition for The Poker House, a 2008 film Petty directed, inspired by her childhood.

“The exact same thing when I saw Jennifer, I went, ‘Okay, movie star, come here,'” Petty said. “It was just like that. It was like the first time I saw Leonardo on screen.”

Petty appreciated getting Lawrence, who had appeared on The Bill Engvall Show and other episodic series, before she learned the mechanics of filmmaking.

“I like the naturalness that comes from not knowing anything about cameras and lighting, when you’re just doing your job,” Petty said. “She just was very free with her talents and her heart and her face. I’m glad that we worked together.”

Currently, Petty plays the coroner on NCIS: Origins. She is impressed by the makeup artists.

“I got to see a lot of cool prosthetics,” Petty said. “On NCIS, they do such a great job with the special effects makeup on the dead people.”

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In 1993’s Free Willy, Petty played a whale trainer.

“I had a nice four or five summers in a row, didn’t I?” Petty reflected. “You know how to say hi to a killer whale? You jump up and down on him really hard. That’s what they like.”