Lindsay Crouse

Lindsay Ann Crouse is an American actress born on May 12, 1948, at Le Roy Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side. She is the daughter of playwright and librettist Russel Crouse and Anna Crouse, née Erskine. Her maternal grandparents were author and educator John Erskine and his wife Pauline Ives. Her full name is a deliberate tribute to the Broadway writing partnership of Howard Lindsay and her father Russel Crouse, who together wrote much of The Sound of Music, whose 1946 play State of the Union won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and whose final collaboration was Mr. President in 1962. Crouse has described the atmosphere of her upbringing by noting that in her family the work ethic was treated as a byword, with someone's typewriter going at any hour.

Crouse attended the Chapin School, graduating in 1966, and went on to Radcliffe College, graduating in 1970. She received her acting training at HB Studio in New York City, having initially pursued a performing career as a modern and jazz dancer before transitioning to acting. She made her Broadway debut in the 1972 revival of Much Ado About Nothing, which is also listed in her verified credits as Much Ado About Everything, and subsequently appeared on Broadway through 1991, including a starring role in The Homecoming. She received a Theatre World Award in 1992.

Her film career began in 1976 with small roles in television and theatrical productions, including All the President's Men. In 1977 she appeared in Slap Shot as Lily Braden, the discontented wife of hockey player Ned Braden, and also appeared that year in Between the Lines. Her 1982 film work included a role as a decisive witness in The Verdict. Crouse received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1984 film Places in the Heart. In 1987 she took the starring role of psychiatrist Margaret Ford in House of Games, written and directed by her then-husband David Mamet. Her additional film credits include Prefontaine in 1997 and The Insider in 1999.

On television, Crouse took on a recurring role as Kate McBride, a lesbian police officer on Hill Street Blues during its sixth season in 1986, a character noted as the first lesbian recurring role on a major network. She later joined the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its fourth season as Professor Maggie Walsh. Her guest appearances span Alias, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Columbo, Criminal Minds, Law and Order, ER, Millennium, and NYPD Blue. In 1996 she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for her work in the CBS Schoolbreak Special episode Between Mother and Daughter. She is also a Grammy Award nominee.

In later years Crouse directed her focus toward theater. In 2007 she opened a revival of The Belle of Amherst, a one-woman show about the life of poet Emily Dickinson, at the Gloucester Stage in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The following summer she appeared in Lee Blessing's Going to St. Ives with the Gloucester Stage Company, and she provided narration for Virginia Lee Burton: A Sense of Place, a documentary about Virginia Lee Burton. In 2021 she appeared in a limited engagement of Mornings at Seven at Broadway's Theatre at St. Clements.

Crouse married playwright David Mamet in 1977, having met him during the production of Slap Shot. John Lahr, writing in Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles, noted that Mamet received his first screenwriting assignment through a chain of events involving Crouse, who was auditioning for Bob Rafelson's 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice. Crouse and Mamet divorced in 1990 and have two daughters together, Willa and Zosia Mamet. Crouse had previously been in a relationship with Robert Duvall. Her brother is Timothy Crouse, author of The Boys on the Bus, a book about political journalism during the 1972 presidential campaign.

Crouse is a Buddhist and in 2005 organized an annual Buddhist educational program, originally held at the Windhover Center for the Performing Arts in Rockport, Massachusetts, before relocating in 2010 to The Governor's Academy in Byfield, Massachusetts.