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Emmy-winning actress Loretta Swit passed away at 87 years old. Her death was confirmed by her publicist, Harlan Boll, who also shared details about her passing. The actress reportedly died in the early morning of Friday, May 30, 2025, in her home in New York City. As for the cause of her death, it's believed to be due to natural causes.
Swit made a name for herself as a Broadway actress in the 1960s before pursuing a career on the small and big screen. Loretta Swit is perhaps best known for playing head nurse Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the CBS drama M*A*S*H, which aired for 11 seasons from 1972 to 1983.
The medical drama, set during the Korean War, won 14 Primetime Emmy Awards, including two Best Supporting Actress awards for Swit. She also won "Favorite Female TV Performer" from the People's Choice Awards in 1983, tied with fellow actress Linda Evans.
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Loretta Swit "always wanted to be an actress"
Loretta Swit's last acting credit was the 2019 Rich Christiano drama Play the Flute. It's the latest of the dozens of TV and movie projects she's done since she debuted in the Mannix TV series in 1970. Her earlier works include guest-starring roles in Mission: Impossible, Gunsmoke, Cade's County, and Hawaii Five-O.
Additionally, she appeared in several films, including Deadhead Miles, Freebie and the Bean, Race the Devil, S.O.B., and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Loretta Swit also played a nun in Miracle at Moreaux and a deranged murderer in Hell Hath No Fury. In her 1979 feature for People magazine, Swit expressed her long-time dream of performing. She said,
"I always wanted to be an actress. Luckily, my mother loved movies and we would go double features and sit through both films twice."
She said that she got her first break on Broadway, specifically when she became an understudy for the role of Ellen Gordon in Any Wednesday in 1965. She called it the "perfect break-in" despite never having to perform before touring with various productions. As a Broadway actress, she starred in Shirley Valentine and Mame and was also in Same Time, Next Year and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
As for the character that helped her become a household name, Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, Loretta Swit said in an interview with Emmy TV Legends in 2011,
"She was a head nurse and her mission was to be the best d*mn nurse in Korea, [and] I tried to help her achieve that."
She also described the writing for M*A*S*H as "spectacular." She said that it helped her "come close" to achieving what the character required. She starred in the CBS series with Alan Alda as Captain Hawkeye Pierce, Jamie Farr as Corporal Klinger, Mike Farrell as Captain Hunnicutt, and more.
Loretta Swit is expected to appear in the upcoming film Second Chances. The feature is currently in pre-production, according to her IMDb page.
Loretta Swit was previously married to actor Dennis Holahan. He guest-starred on M*A*S*H as a love interest of her character in the CBS series. The two, however, didn't have children, and Swit never remarried after her divorce from Holahan in 1995.
