M*A*S*H star Loretta Swit, a two-time Emmy winner who has also seen success as a theater actress, is turning 85 years old this week. In celebration of her birthday, we take a look back at her life and career.

Swit was born Loretta Szwed on November 4, 1937 in Passaic, New Jersey. She attended Pop Pius XII High School where she was a cheerleader, basketball player, and performed in school plays. After graduating from the Katharine Gibbs School, she took clerical jobs as a stenographer and a secretary while learning to dancing, honing her acting skills, and training as a singer.

Her first off-Broadway appearance was in An Enemy of the People then The Balcony. Swit was in a touring production of Any Wednesday, was in the Los Angeles run of The Odd Couple, then performed on Broadway in Same Time, Next Year and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. From the 1990s to the 2010s she has repeatedly starred in the one-woman play, Shirley Valentine. Her more recent theatrical work was in Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, which was in Buffalo, New York.

Swit’s first onscreen work came in 1969 on Hawaii Five-O, followed by early ‘70s appearances on the TV shows Mission: Impossible, Mannix, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza.

From 1972 to 1983 she played head nurse Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in all 11 seasons of M*A*S*H. For her work on the dark comedy turned mature dramedy, Swit won two Emmy awards and was nominated every year from ’74 to ’83.

While she was working on M*A*S*H, Swit was also in Young Dr. Kildare, Love, American Style, Policewomen, It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman! TV movie, The Love Boat, and played Detective Cagney in the pilot of Cagney & Lacey. Throughout the late ‘80s she was in the movies Execution, Miracle at Moreaux, Dreams of Gold: The Mel Fisher Story, and Whoops Apocalypse.

In the ‘90s, Swit was in A Matter of Principal, she voiced Marcia Cates in Batman: The Animated Series, and she was in Murder, She Wrote, Forest Warrior, Diagnosis Murder, and Beach Movie. After a 20-year break from film and TV, she starred in 2019’s Play the Flute, which is her most recent credit.