Lindsay Crouse - Personal Life

Personal Life

Crouse married playwright David Mamet in 1977. Crouse caught Mamet's eye in the hockey classic Slap Shot. When he heard she had a part in his play Reunion at the Yale Repertory Theater, Mamet packed a bag and told a friend, "I'm going to New Haven to marry Lindsay Crouse." When the two did indeed wed, Crouse's mother took her aside and told her what Oscar Hammerstein had told her when she married Russel Crouse: "A playwright's wife is the only woman who knows how her husband feels when she's having a baby."

John Lahr writes in his book Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles that when Mamet married Crouse in 1978, he "married into show business aristocracy." Lahr also writes that Mamet got his first screenwriting assignment through Crouse. Crouse was on her way to audition for Bob Rafelson's 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mamet told Crouse to tell Rafelson that "he was a fool if he didn't hire me to write the screenplay." Although Mamet was joking, Crouse did it and Rafelson called Mamet and asked Mamet why he should hire him for the screenplay. "Because I'll give you a good screenplay or a sincere apology," said Mamet. Mamet got the job.

Crouse and Mamet have two daughters, Willa and Zosia. They divorced in 1990. Crouse is now married to Rick Blue, a television director and editor.

Crouse's brother is Timothy Crouse, author of The Boys on the Bus about political journalism during the 1972 presidential campaign. Timothy Crouse also co-authored a new libretto for the musical Anything Goes with John Weidman that opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre on Broadway on October 19, 1987, and ran for 784 performances.