After this feisty, kinetic, highly offbeat actress from Chattanooga, Tennessee, broke into TV in the 1980s, she immediately set herself apart from the norm with the mini-movie Bates Motel (1987). This rather inauspicious beginning would also set Lori Petty off on a career as a fighter and a misfit, types for which she would be best known.
She spent her childhood traveling the US with her father, a Pentecostal minister. Her keen talents first lent themselves toward being a graphic artist in Omaha, Nebraska, but an impulsive desire to act quickly took precedence and soon she was off to New York, where she took acting classes and pounded the pavement for jobs.
Going nowhere fast, she eventually headed for Los Angeles and finally found an “in”. Following a number of mediocre TV roles, she won a bit of attention on the short-lived series Booker (1989) as a lippy secretary, then hit paydirt in secondary roles as an outrageous Cyndi Lauper wannabe in Cadillac Man (1990) and as Patrick Swayze’s ex-girlfriend/waitress who hooks up with Keanu Reeves in Point Break (1991).
It looked like mainstream stardom might happen for the tomboy actress, especially after getting cast as Geena Davis’ bratty baseball-playing sister in the highly successful A League of Their Own (1992).
However, Lori was an intriguing, kooky sort and difficult to cast. Such disparate roles as a kind-hearted animal trainer in Free Willy (1993) and the sole female recruit in Pauly Shore’s inane comedy In the Army Now (1994) only proved the point.
She seemed bent towards playing scrappy figures alongside the big action guys but started off on the wrong foot when she was replaced by Sandra Bullock in Sylvester Stallone’s Demolition Man (1993) due to “artistic differences”.
She did play a lone female cop in the thriller The Glass Shield (1994), then found her true calling as the bizarre cartoon heroine Tank Girl (1995), which was billed as “a post-apocalyptic comedy”.
The crop-haired, tough-as-nails actress has been taking it to the limit ever since, most recently co-starring with the similarly styled Gina Gershon in Prey for Rock & Roll (2003) as members of a punk rock band.
