“It was a dream, for real. It was so much fun. 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 Orange is the New Black actress tells PEOPLE.
Petty, 62, says that they shot on the coast of Hawaii, and the production team would watch the sun and time the shots to sunrises, sunsets and golden hour. “Just watching the sun come up and just knowing how blessed I was. I’m really thankful that I had the presence of mind to realize how fortunate I’ve been in my life and to be aware of it while it’s happening. I just felt a lot of gratitude,” she recalls.
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The most challenging aspect of making the film was “having your surfboard tied to the bottom of the ocean in pipeline.”
“We had no business in the pipeline. 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. We all just took our lumps, but we had a good time doing it,” the actress says.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers rented a house for the movie, and the cast would crash there after the surfing lessons. “We were just a pile of wet, dirty people in this house. Then we’d go down and go surfing every morning, like four or five in the morning. But we were just happy, and it was no drama and no princesses,” Petty says.
She says that while the cast was “in character and doing what we’re supposed to,” they would “take the piss out of each other and make fun of each other” just “how friends are, how families are.”
“These people consider themselves family to each other. There was no special treatment, no divas,” Petty shares.
She then admits that, against the studio’s wishes, Swayze would “go skydiving before work.”
“He loved it. He loved riding motorcycles. He loved skydiving. He loved dancing. He loved anything he could do with his body. 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,” Petty shares.
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While they were shooting the movie, the Tank Girl actress didn’t know the impact Point Break was going to have. “I knew Patrick Swayze and his talent and legacy, and I knew Keanu’s talent and stardom. But when you’re making a movie, you don’t really think about what it’s going to do,” she explains.
When reflecting on the 35th anniversary of the movie, which first hit theaters on July 12, 1991, Petty says that it “doesn’t make sense” that the film was nearly four decades ago. “It scrambles your brain that it was that long ago, especially when people love it now, like Tank Girl, like League of Their Own. Things that are all coming back because of the realness and the real people and the real emotions and the real sweat and the real dirt, not fake,” she says.
Petty adds, “There’s nothing fake in Point Break. There’s nothing fake in League of Their Own. It’s real, and it’s emotional, and it’s loving, and it’s compassionate, and it’s dirty and all these great things that you can’t get out of a f–king computer.”
In celebration of its 35th anniversary, Point Break is coming back to theaters on Aug. 16 and 19. The movie will be presented in a new 4K restoration, and fans can get tickets at FathomEntertainment.com
