There’s a great skydiving sequence in “Point Break,” and Swayze actually did his own stunts for the moment. As he reveals, he had to “battle insurance companies to get to do the skydiving in the movie.” However, it wasn’t the skydiving that nearly cost him his life. Instead, it was the surfing. As Swayze put it, he almost got his “brains pounded in by the biggest surf on this planet.” 

He added: 

“I almost died six to ten times … I thought I was outta here. I had this bone in my sternum that I almost injured being on much bigger waves than I had any business being on … So we had to groove out my surfboard, build up my wetsuit to try and get me off that bone, but of course, it’s not possible. Every time you try to turtle through a wave, it just slams you.”

Thankfully, Swayze was able to survive the shoot, and the results speak for themselves. It might sound like hyperbole, but I firmly believe that “Point Break” is an action masterpiece, one worth revisiting again and again. And Swayze’s very chill villain performance is part of what makes the movie so special, even if all that surfing almost cost him his life at the time.