After this feisty, highly offbeat actress from Chattanooga, Tennessee broke into
TV in the 1980s, she immediately set herself apart from the norm with a prime
role as new owner Bud Cort's female friend in the bizarre mini-movie
Bates Motel (1987). This inauspicious beginning would also set Lori Petty off on a
career as a kinetic fighter and a misfit, types for which she would be best-known.
Lori was born on October 14, 1963, and spent her childhood traveling the US with her
father, a Pentecostal minister. Her keen talents first lent themselves to being a graphic
artist in Omaha, Nebraska, but an impulsive desire to act quickly took precedence and
soon she was off for New York City, 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 pay dirt 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 Gefährliche Brandung (1991).
It looked like mainstream stardom might happen for the tomboyish actress, especially after
she was cast as Geena Davis' bratty baseball-playing sister in the highly-successful
Eine Klasse für sich (1992). However, while Lori proved to be an intriguing, kooky sort, she also proved
more difficult to cast. Such disparate roles as a kind-hearted animal trainer in Free Willy - Ruf der Freiheit (1993)
and the sole female recruit in Pauly Shore's inane comedy In the Army Now - Die Trottel der Kompanie (1994) only proved
the point.
She seemed bent towards playing scrappy, hard-edged 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) because of "artistic differences". She did play a lone female cop in the thriller
The Glass Shield (1994), then found her true calling as bizarre cartoon heroine Tank Girl (1995), which was
billed as "a post-apocalyptic comedy." Playing along the same hard lines, Lori portrayed an FBI agent
who teams up with a Tokyo policewoman Yûki Amami in the crime thriller Countdown - Bombenterror in Seattle (1996); a butch
lesbian in the social comedy Relax... It's Just Sex (1998); and an aggressive, tough-talking stripper at odds with the
Mafia in the potboiler Denver P.D. - Killer Woman (1999). She ended the decade on TV as motel clerk Max in the crime-drama
fantasy series Brimstone (1998).
Into the millennium, the crop-haired, tough-as-nails actress continued to push limits. Following roles in the
action films Firetrap (2001) and Route 666 (2001), Lori co-starred alongside the similarly tough-styled
Gina Gershon in Prey for Rock & Roll (2003) as members of a punk rock band. She later starred in the creature
vs. human horror opus Cryptid (2006) and played "First Murderer" in a contemporary Hollywood update of
Shakespeare's Richard III (2007); a deputy in the cross-country sports movie Chasing 3000 (2010); a doctor
in the horror thriller Dead Awake (2016); a female Marine in Fear, Love, and Agoraphobia (2018); and a campy role in the low-budget
horror flick A Deadly Legend (2020).
On TV, Lori guest-starred on shows like "The Beast", "NYPD Blue", "CSI:NY", "Masters of Horror",
"House", "Prison Break", and "Hawaii Five-0"; and, more notably, she had an amusing recurring role as
loony, paranoiac Lolly in the women's-prison series Orange Is the New Black (2013). On the other side of the camera, she
wrote and directed the film The Poker House - Nach einer wahren Geschichte (2008) starring Jennifer Lawrence, a re-dramatization of Lori's teenage
years in Iowa. The film earned awards at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
