What Happened To Once-Popular '90s Star Lori Petty?

Lori Petty began her acting career in the mid-1980s, making her television debut as a punk rocker in a 1985 episode of "All My Children." More roles followed, mainly comprised of guest spots on TV shows such as "Alien Nation" and "Miami Vice," until appearing in her first film, the 1990 Robin Williams comedy "Cadillac Man." Petty's next film proved to be her breakthrough, starring opposite the late Patrick Swayze and Hollywood nice guy Keanu Reeves in the hit surfer crime drama "Point Break" in 1991. "Point Break" led to bigger roles and a string of hits, including "A League of Their Own" in 1992, followed by "Free Willy," "Poetic Justice," and "In the Army Now."

Petty's first starring role on film came in 1995 with "Tank Girl," an audacious post-apocalyptic comedy based on a cult-favorite comic book. The film, by no stretch of the imagination, was a tremendous flop. Costing $25 million to make, "Tank Girl" brought in a measly $4 million at the box office. 

Suddenly, it all came grinding to a halt, and Petty's meteoric Hollywood ascent crashed down. Since her '90s heyday, Petty's career had its highs and lows, until a role in an acclaimed Netflix hit provided the comeback this talented actor so richly deserved. This is how it all played out for Lori Petty.

It's fair to say that the failure of "Tank Girl" hit Lori Petty hard, given that the film marked her first starring role in a major Hollywood motion picture. "It was devastating," the film's director, Rachel Talalay, told Entertainment Weekly. "I mean, they didn't have massively high expectations for it. But it got so much publicity and so much good word of mouth that they were expecting it to be pretty successful. It was really mind-blowing to see the box office so bad."

Decades later, "Tank Girl" has gone on to become a cult hit, providing Petty with an additional source of income via appearances at fan conventions. "It was way ahead of its time," Petty declared in a 2013 interview, "and I'm happy that I got to do it."

Speaking with The Daily Beast, Petty conceded that the brutal box-office losses, coupled with her unconventional looks and behavior, contributed to all those high-profile movie offers vanishing. "Well, because I was thirty-something and I hadn't married my agent, married any guy co-stars, or gotten fake [breasts] or Botox," she said, pointing to Hollywood's ever-present sexist double standard. "I never wanted to be a bombshell; I wanted to be an actor," she said, observing that, "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.'"

With her movie career seemingly at a standstill, Petty looked to television. She and friend Karyn Parsons pitched the Fox network a sitcom they'd created, and Fox picked it up. "Lush Life" premiered in the fall of 1996. As the show's producer, writer, and star, Petty had created a dream job for herself, playing a quirky Bohemian artist who closely resembled her actual self. Sadly, Fox pulled the plug after just seven episodes aired — and didn't bother to tell her, with Petty discovering "Lush Life" had been canceled when she showed up on the soundstage to discover nobody there except crew members tearing down the sets.

From there, she starred in the low-budget, straight-to-video thriller, "Countdown" (also released under the name "Serial Bomber"). In 1997, she guest-starred in two episodes of "Profiler," playing a serial killer. 

Petty continued to find sporadic work as a TV guest star. Television would continue to be her primary home for years to come, and it's a process that she's always found enjoyable. This includes not only the acting itself, but also the research she undertakes for each role. "We wouldn't do it if it wasn't fun," she said in a video from The Academy, in which she answers fan questions. "Preparing for a role is equally as fun as between action and cut. Preparing is the joy of learning, and reading, and creating, and painting, and talking, and rehearsing ... it's all fun."

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Petty ping-ponged between low-budget indie movies and TV guest spots. These roles ranged from being part of the ensemble cast of the 1998 film "Relax... It's Just Sex" to "Star Trek: Voyager," playing a humanoid alien stranded on an uncharted planet on which the "Voyager" shuttle crashes. The diversity of the acting jobs she took during those years continued in subsequent gigs. Petty joined the cast of the 1998 TV series "Brimstone" (a supernatural cop drama that ended after its first season), and appeared in a 2001 episode of the sitcom "The Parkers." She also made more mainstream single-episode turns on TV hits "ER" and "NYPD Blue" around this time.

As she found her footing in the television industry, Petty also began delving into the world of voice acting, playing the villain Livewire in "Superman: The Animated Series." She reprised the character in "The New Batman Adventures," and even voiced the role in a video game, "Superman: Shadow of Apokolips." 

Looking back on the eclectic work she took in her post-"Tank Girl" years, Petty admitted that she didn't do her career any favors by refusing to adapt to more traditional female roles in larger productions. "I always used to tell [casting directors], 'If you want the girl next door, go next door, that's where she lives, [because] I'm not her.' So it's kind of my fault," Petty told The Guardian.

Much like she had done in her short-lived sitcom, "Lush Life," Petty once again carved out her own opportunity with the 2008 feature film "The Poker House." The film was a labor of love, co-written by "In Living Color" alum David Alan Grier, and marking her first time behind the camera as director. The quasi-autobiographical story, drawn from her own life as a teenager in 1970s Iowa, tells the story of three sisters whose mother is an addict, living in a house full of criminals, pimps, sex workers, and their clients. As Petty told The Daily Beast, she encountered people who refused to believe that the harsh situations depicted in the film were actually experiences that she lived through. "People think that just because you're in the movies, real things like that couldn't have happened to you," she mused.

Not only did "The Poker House" serves as Petty's directorial debut while telling what was essentially her origin story, the film is also significant for providing the first starring role in a film for Jennifer Lawrence, an early stop in her stunning transformation from teenage actor to adult Oscar winner. "I cast her in her first film," Petty proudly declared of giving the lead role to the future movie star. "Look, she deserves 100% of her success, period ... But she's amazing and the camera loves her, and that's why I cast her."

Having established herself as a director with "The Poker House," Petty refocused herself on acting in 2009. As it turned out, late 2000s television offered some juicy roles for her. One of these was Janice Burke on the medical drama "House," a woman with Huntington's disease who participates in an experimental drug trial. She also scored a guest spot on A&E's "The Cleaner," starring Benjamin Bratt as an interventionist who helps addicts. Petty played a homeless woman named Sunshine, appearing in two episodes.

Meanwhile, 2009 also saw Petty brush up against the law. She was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving after hitting a skateboarder with her car and was also charged with driving without insurance. She entered a plea of no contest and was given 60 months of probation, ordered to complete a 60-day outpatient treatment for alcohol, and required to pay $495 in fees and fines. The arrest remained a sore point, and when she was asked about it in an interview with Collider, she responded, "I have no comment on that. Thank you for like, the last question sucking a**."

Petty also had a two-episode part in "Prison Break" in 2009, playing an inmate named Daddy who runs things behind bars in a women's facility. Interestingly, Petty would be cast as another prison inmate a few years later. The role would propel her back into the spotlight, earning critical acclaim — and even an award or two.

In 2014, Netflix announced that Petty was joining the cast of its hit women-in-prison series, "Orange Is the New Black." While details about her character were not immediately divulged, viewers learned that she was playing a motor-mouthed inmate named Lolly, who'd been transferred to Litchfield Correctional Institution. As the series progressed, it was revealed that Lolly suffered from schizophrenia, with her mental illness ultimately leading to tragic circumstances for her.

"We treated it so seriously," Petty told The Hollywood Reporter about the show's efforts to destigmatize mental illness through her character. "Even though Lolly is funny and lovable — and half of a murderer [laughs] — she's very relatable and people see her as a friend," Petty's portrayal of Lolly brought her two Screen Actors Guild Awards, in 2016 and 2017 respectively, both for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. 

By this time, Petty also started to reap the benefits of "Tank Girl" morphing from box-office disaster to cult hit, and became a sought-after guest on the cosplay and comic book convention circuit. Speaking with the Detroit Metro Times ahead of an appearance at Motor City Comic Con, she admitted she found fan interactions at conventions to be "weird" at times, but came to appreciate them. "When you figure out that they're real excited to see you and they're super happy and that you're making these people happy and I'm getting paid, it's not hard," she said.

Although Petty's "Orange Is the New Black" character was sent to the prison psych ward at the end of the seventh season, never to be seen again, Petty herself was seen plenty during her five-year stint on the popular Netflix show, and afterward. Petty was a sought-after TV guest star in the 2010s. In addition to playing Lolly on "Orange Is the New Black" from 2014 until 2019, Petty acted in a few movies and made some high-profile television appearances. 

Among her most notable guest-starring roles of this era was a 2016 episode of the Batman prequel series "Gotham." Her character, Jeri, owns an underground arthouse club where live performers and mass murderers meet. As Jeri, Petty's painted visage evoked that of the iconic Batman villain, Joker. Speaking with Comic Book Resources (via Bam! Smack! Pow! ), Petty explained who Jeri is. "She's a bad guy who knows where the bodies are buried. She literally knows where they are buried," she said of her character, who reveals to young Bruce Wayne who murdered his parents. "Jeri could see this tough kid and respects that he's a real person to deal with. He wasn't just some silly boy." 

In 2017, Petty also made a memorable one-episode turn in "Hawaii Five-0". In it, she played a nurse taking care of a comatose man whose identity was unknown, until it is revealed that the John Doe has a connection to the Five-0 squad.

In early 2020, filming was underway on HBO's adaptation of "Station Eleven." The post-apocalyptic miniseries depicted a fringe population living in the wake of a pandemic that left one out of every 1,000 people alive. Life imitated art when COVID-19 hit, shutting down production until the following year, when Petty was added to the cast as an ambitious pianist named Sarah.

Shooting in Canada under strict pandemic protocols, "Station Eleven" was unlike anything Petty had ever experienced on a TV or movie set. "There was no furniture in the hotel lobby. There were no restaurants. There were no bars," she recalled in an interview with The Guardian, explaining that she usually has a great time socializing and exploring when filming on location. "This was staying in your bubble. There was literally a plastic bubble inside the car that took you between the hotel and the set," she added.

The themes that "Station Eleven" explores reflect Petty's personal philosophy. "We choose how we react to any given day," she told the Guardian. "I might wake up, I'm gonna take a walk on the beach, I'm gonna be happy. Or I'm gonna stay in bed and read a book and feel sorry for myself." The characters in the series also face those choices, but under dire circumstances that cause them to question the purpose of continuing their daily fight for survival. "They choose to go forward anyway," Petty observed. "They choose life."

As Petty basked in the positive reviews for her performance in "Station Eleven," Petty's schedule filled up rapidly after that. First up was a small role in the 2023 horror flick "You're All Gonna Die." She followed that with the role of Crazy Susan in "Obliterated," the Netflix comedy series about a group of highly trained special forces soldiers who must stop a terrorist threat while partying in Las Vegas, drunk out of their minds. Next, she co-starred in the 2025 film "Tonic," playing the ailing sister of a hard-drinking jazz pianist whose desperation for money compels him to transform into a reluctant hit man. 

Interviewed by Master Chat, Petty said that every role she's taken on has taught her something new — and that this is particularly important because she never studied acting and is completely self-taught. "Most of the lessons you're going to learn are going to be at work," she said, explaining why she never really fit in at acting classes. "Being at work is a whole other animal than being in class. You can work on your accents, physicality, and stage presence. Those things you can learn in class. But to actually be successful, you've got to work at work."

The "NCIS" franchise as been one of television's most successful, sparking several spinoffs while the original series has aired for more than 20 years. Over the course of those decades, there have been many celebs who viewers forgot guest-starred on "NCIS," given how many actors have passed through the show and its spinoffs. Petty counted herself as one of those actors when she acted in nine episodes of "NCIS: Origins."  

As for how many "NCIS" shows there actually are, well, that number keeps growing. In 2024, CBS launched the first-ever prequel series, "NCIS: Origins." Set in the early 1990s, "Origins" chronicled the journey of Leroy Jethro Gibbs (played in the original series by Mark Harmon, who left "NCIS" in 2021) in his early years with the Naval Investigative Service. Austin Stowell of "The Hating Game" plays Gibbs, and was joined by Petty, who was cast as Dr. Lenora Friedman, a veteran pathologist with the San Diego Medical Examiner's Office. 

Petty's Dr. Friedman isn't a series regular on "NCIS: Origins," but a recurring character who makes infrequent but regular appearances. However, it's safe to say that a role on one of television's most-watched franchises will only continue to boost her visibility in the years to come.