Lori Petty Hails From Green Acres, Finds Greener Pastures in ‘Point’

Lori Petty’s life reads like a chapter out of a Theodore Dreiser novel.

Petty, appearing as a surfer in the Patrick Swayze movie “Point Break,” is the daughter of a Pentecostal minister and his wife. She was born, believe it or not, in Green Acres, a trailer park in Chattanooga, Tenn.. Her father’s calling took Petty all over the Midwest. The last stop was Sioux City, Iowa, “where there were more cows than people.”

At 18, she split for New York where there wasn’t a cow in sight.

“I just had this New York thing,” she explains. “When I got there, I felt so at home. I said, ‘This is where the crazy people go.’ It’s OK to be yourself in New York. In L.A. it’s difficult.”

Petty, 28, would love to move back to the Big Apple: “But I have to live where the food is now. I also got to be able to put gas in my baby blue 1979 Lincoln Town Car. It costs me about 60 bucks a week to drive it.”

Petty got her big break playing a terrorist named “Skunk” on the ABC daytime drama “All My Children,” and made her film debut last year as Robin Williams’ kooky girlfriend in “Cadillac Man.”

“Robin gave me so much confidence as an actress. I would build Robin a house and paint it.”

A tomboy, Petty learned to surf for “Point Break,” which was especially difficult since she can barely swim.

“I thought you would just fly over the ocean and not like go in the ocean. There are too many animals sitting in there.”

The former Little Leaguer is in Chicago brushing up on her baseball to film Penny Marshall’s movie, “A League of Their Own,” about the women’s professional baseball league during World War II.

“I am going to pitch at Wrigley Field,” she squeals. “The most bases stolen record is still held by a woman. Nobody knows this because we don’t get taught women’s history in school because our schoolbooks are written by men!”