Wendy Crewson was raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She attended Westwood Collegiate and was first exposed to acting when she performed in The Boy Friend in grade 10. Crewson attended Queens University in Kingston, Ontario where she won the prestigious Lorne Greene Award for outstanding work in the theater. She then studied at The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London before returning across the pond to begin an acting career that has seen her work both in the U.S. and in her native country. Crewson performed in television nearly a decade before her first feature "The Doctor" (1991) opened in theaters. A regular on the short-lived CBS dramatic series "Hard Copy" (1987) that introduced her to husband Michael Murphy, she also acted with him in Robert Altman's critically-acclaimed HBO series "Tanner '88" (1988). 

 

Crewson's first significant feature role came as the mother of an evil Macauley Culkin in "The Good Son" (1993). She starred opposite Tim Allen in his impressive debut in "The Santa Clause" (1995), a film better than the standard holiday fare indicated by the title. Crewson was the attractive single female brought to distract Peter Gallagher from his preoccupation with dead wife Michelle Pfeiffer in "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday" (1996) and brought warmth to her role as First Lady Grace Marshall opposite Harrison Ford in the blockbuster "Air Force One" (1997). TV provided her a turn as Roberta Crachit in "Ebbie" (1995), a gender-bent "A Christmas Carol" starring Susan Lucci, and Crewson has kept busy on the small screen, assuming the role of Susan Silverman in a pair of telepics based on the Robert Urich TV series adapted from Robert Parker's "Spenser For Hire" novels, as well as essaying novelist Gail Bowen's heroine Joanne Kilbourn in a series of Lifetime TV movies under the banner title "Criminal Instinct." She also had prominent roles in "The Last Brickmaker in America" (2001) starring Sidney Poitier, and "Summer's End" (1998). On the big screen, the actress has continued to make her presence known, largely in supporting roles. She appeared as one of robotic Robin Williams' owners in "Bicentennial Man" (1999), as the conservative, in-the-dark mother of one of the lesbian lovers in "Better Than Chocolate" (1999), as Arnold Schwarzenegger's wife in "The Sixth Day" (2000) and as part of the ensemble of the multi-storylined "Between Strangers" (2002). In 2001 Crewson also co-executive produced and starred in the independent film "Suddenly Naked," in which she played a lonely Jackie Collins-style novelist who falls for a much-younger man.