This daughter of singer-actors Bing Crosby and Kathryn Grant Crosby began playing sweet good girls, but over the course of her career Mary Crosby (billed early in her career as Mary Frances Crosby) is best recalled as evil Kristin Shepard, the character who shot Larry Hagman's J.R. Ewing during her 1979-1981 run on the CBS series "Dallas".

Crosby began acting at age four in a stage production of "Peter Pan", which starred her mother. As a child, she did TV commercials for Minute Man orange juice with her parents and brothers, and also appeared on Bing Crosby's variety specials, notably those