Acting Career
After graduating from Radcliffe College in 1970, Crouse began her performing career as a modern and jazz dancer but she soon switched to acting and made her broadway debut in Much Ado About Nothing in 1972.
Crouse's film career began in 1976, with a small roles in television and theatrical movies. In 1977 she appeared as Lily Braden, the discontented wife of hockey player Ned Braden, in the comedy classic Slap Shot. Crouse was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1984 movie Places in the Heart. Among her films was a starring role in House of Games, the 1987 film directed and written by her then-husband David Mamet in which she plays Margaret Ford, a psychiatrist who is intrigued by the art of the con. "It's always hard to be directed by someone who's close to you," Crouse says. "Because everybody needs to go home and complain about the director. Everybody."
Crouse has appeared in featured and guest roles in a number of television series. Notable roles include a recurring portrayal of Kate McBride, a lesbian police officer on Hill Street Blues during its sixth season in 1986, one of the earliest appearances of a lesbian character in a major American TV show. Crouse is also known for her role in the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where she was a recurring supporting cast member playing Professor Maggie Walsh. Crouse has also guest-starred on Alias, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Columbo, Criminal Minds, Law & Order, ER, Millennium, and NYPD Blue.
In recent years, Crouse has concentrated on the theater. "Once you get your driver's license, you end your film career," says Crouse. "Look at my generation. Great actresses like Glenn Close and Susan Sarandon—there's nothing written for anyone over a certain age." In 2007 Crouse 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. "You can't stop and recite something," says Crouse. "You have to keep the poetry very, very active, which is pretty easy with Dickinson. She was striving so hard to understand what life was about. It's very dramatic poetry in that way.
Crouse appeared in Lee Blessing's Going to St. Ives with the Gloucester Stage Company during the summer of 2008 and provided the narration for Virginia Lee Burton: A Sense of Place, a documentary film about Virginia Lee Burton.
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