"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. This was the first lesbian recurring character on a major network. 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", "", "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. Crouse married playwright David Mamet in 1977. The two had met during the production on "Slap Shot". John Lahr writes in his book "Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles" that when Mamet married Crouse in 1977, 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; when the director asked why he should hire him for the screenplay, Mamet replied: "Because I'll give you a good screenplay or a sincere apology."