Lori Petty: Directing is genderless. The only thing... I love men. I'm...

Directing is genderless. The only thing...I love men.

Lori Petty

men

Don't be afraid and don't let the past affect your present.

Lori Petty

past

I live in Venice Beach so I see this all day, every day. Some people just ignore people with mental illness, pretend they're not there. They don't say "good morning" to them; they don't act like they're human. They'll get locked up, or just ignored. It's just awful.

Lori Petty

morning beach people

During the football scene in the Point Break they were playing, and I wasn't slated to be in the football scene. I was like, "I want to play!" So they said, "Go play." It was just a gas. There was a responsibility of being the leading lady - there's a responsibility to that.

Lori Petty

point-break responsibility football

That's what they do to whatever I was - 19 or something. You're the baby hooker. You can ask any woman my age and we've all played baby hookers.

Lori Petty

age baby

When I was in the writers' room, all these writers were like, "Ugh, another star that they gave a writing-producing credit to." But then within like an hour, they were like, "You're really a writer." "Yeah, I really am. I'm a writer, and a director, and a producer, and an actor, and a painter, and I do all that stuff in the Lush Life." It was great.

Lori Petty

hours like-you producers

The thing is, if people get it right away, I just don't think you're making art. I think you're making something they're comfortable with. You have to challenge people. You know, it has to be new. It has to be something they haven't seen before. Just bring them something they haven't seen before. They aren't going to love it right away because they haven't seen it before. So they have to take a minute, you know?

Lori Petty

people art thinking

That's something that I learned when I was homeless. Hotels are awesome because they are going to let you in and you can use the bathroom and when you're young and pretty you can probably use the pool. Somebody might by you a drink.

Lori Petty

homeless pool bathroom

In Point Break, I was the only woman in there, so it was pretty easy to feel like a sex symbol. You've got all the naked, wet, Hot Chili Peppers, right? You've got Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves and then the whole crew. It was me and 50 dudes the whole time. It was awesome!

Lori Petty

point-break easy hot

There was a guy with mental illness in the middle of the street just yelling and hollering. I have a number that I can call - it's not 911 - to tell them, "You need to help this man get out of the street." But you have to be that person, you have to pick up the phone, you have to do it; you can't just walk by and act like they're not people. They're somebody's kid, somebody's dad, somebody's brother.

Lori Petty

dad brother kids

When we get to A League Of Their Own, I have to be Geena Davis' little sister who wants to be like her and wants everything that she has and is jealous and upset and mad. Well, that was easy. I mean, she has an Academy Award. I think I can be upset about that. She's 99 feet tall and she's drop-dead gorgeous and she's all feminine and pretty. I had to pretend I couldn't run as fast as her. That was hard.

Lori Petty

jealous running mean

It was like the first time I'd ever seen Hollywood just really not do the right thing. We filmed Free Willy in Mexico. I'd come in a really nice car from my hotel, and we'd have to drive around all the crew that was sleeping in the parking lot. People making their breakfast on the ground. It was because there was a whale there that was in a little tank. It just felt gross. It felt really bad. They didn't free that whale for, damn... at least 10 years later. The poor whale had horrible psoriasis all over him, and his fin didn't work.

Lori Petty

nice sleep people

When I was only in the first episode of Orange Is The New Black, I'm thinking by lunchtime I'm ready for my contract, like, "What's up?" I finally just spoke up and said, "What's the deal? This is the first episode. I'd love to be on your show." And they said, "Oh, Lori, we filmed out of order, we already filmed the whole season two." So I had to wait six whole months to come back again.

Lori Petty

black waiting thinking

I had seen Orange Is The New Black show on Netflix and the first thing that came to my mind was, "Why am I not on this show? It's just irritating me right now." So I made some phone calls and told them, "I want to be on your show." And they found a spot for me.

Lori Petty

irritating black mind

What the studio didn't understand is that surfing is about a billion times more dangerous than skydiving. They would not allow the boys to skydive, but they allowed us to surf in pipeline in Hawaii. Nine-hundred foot waves. So we're out there in the middle where the greatest surfers in the world surf. They have these long lenses on from the beach, so they can't see anything. They are just shooting our faces in the Point Break.

Lori Petty

boys beach long

I worked with Ice-T, Ice Cube, and Tupac! But Tupac was the sweetest man in the world. That whole thug thing was an act - it was silly and dumb. He was a complete gentleman and one of the kindest men I've ever met.

Lori Petty

man gentleman men world

I never wanted to be a bombshell; I wanted to be an actor. I would much prefer to be a woman than a man, but if I was a dude, maybe I'd have Johnny Depp's island because women in this industry after a certain age definitely don't get to do 'Pirates of the Caribbean.'

Lori Petty

woman man women age

The first things I did was I was a writer, painter, and photographer, and we grew up very poor, so even though I could get into any college I wanted, there was no way to pay for it.

Lori Petty

things poor college way

I think many actresses want to be famous and want to be the prettiest, and that wasn't my trek. I was thinking, 'I gotta get out of here... how do I get out of here?' I like acting, but I like directing more.

Lori Petty

like think want thinking

What you write on the page has nothing to do with when you're on set. When you're on set, it has nothing to do with when you're in the editing room. And when you're in the editing room, it has nothing to do with the final movie. You just have to let it go.

Lori Petty

nothing go you editing

Directing is genderless. The only thing... I love men. I'm not being mean to them, but they can't hear you. I don't have a husband, and so I'm not really attuned to it, but I didn't know that they could not really hear you. Like, I'm talking, and they just walk away.