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Loretta Swit, who played Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on the hit comedy series M*A*S*H, died today at her home in New York City. She was 87.

Her death was announced by her representative Harlan Boll, who said a New York City police report indicates Swit died just after noon today of suspected natural causes.

Swit was a mainstay on the classic and beloved comedy series for its entire 11-year run, nominated for Emmy Awards every year from 1974-83, winning in 1980 and 1982.

Born Loretta Jane Szwed on November 4, 1937, in Passaic, New Jersey, studied drama in New York City with Gene Frankel, the noted theater director and acting teacher. Swit appeared in Off Broadway productions throughout the 1960s, and in 1967 toured with the national company of the comedy Any Wednesday.

Swit made her TV debut in 1969 on Hawaii Five-o, with subsequent credits including Mannix, Mission: Impossible, Gunsmoke, Bonanza and The Bold Ones,...

Actress Loretta Swit, best known for her role as fan favorite character Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan on the beloved TV series M*A*S*H, has passed away. She was 87 years old.

Per Variety, Swit died on Friday at her home in New York City. According to her rep, Harlan Boll, her death was reported to be at 12:01 p.m. due to "suspected natural causes." No other information about the circumstances of her passing were revealed. Her death came just three days after she shared a post on Instagram to pay tribute to real-life fallen soldiers.

Posting an image of her M*A*S*H character, Swit said, "With loving gratitude they served and protected and gave their lives. Rest In Peace. God is nigh." This followed another recent post Swit made two days prior, which acknowledged co-star Gary Burghoff's birthday with several images of the actor,...

Loretta Swit, who played Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on seminal TV comedy “Mash,” died Friday at her home in New York City. She was 87.

Her rep Harlan Boll said she died of natural causes.

For her work on “Mash” Swit was Emmy nominated for outstanding performance by a supporting actress in a comedy every year from 1974-83, winning the Emmy in 1980 and 1982.

Her “Mash” co-star Alan Alda remembered her on X, writing “Loretta was a supremely talented actor. She deserved all her 10 Emmy nominations and her 2 wins. But more than acting her part, she created it. She worked hard In showing the writing staff how they could turn the character from a one joke sexist stereotype into a real person — with real feelings and ambitions. We celebrated the day the script came out listing her character not as Hot Lips, but as Margaret. Loretta made the most of her time here.

Last week, CBS premiered the new political drama Madam Secretary, which stars Téa Leoni as Elizabeth Faulkner McCord, the U.S. Secretary of State. It's hardly a far-fetched concept, as we've seen three female secretaries of state since 1997: Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. But it's nonetheless rare to see a fictional universe with a woman in one of the nation's top three positions of political power. (Yep, even in fake realities, politics is a man's game.) And historically speaking, Hollywood has played it as a joke more often than not. So which fictional female presidents, vice presidents...

There is no question that blackface is a racist trope too regularly used on film, TV, and in magazines. While not nearly as rampant as it was in the 1930s, there have been hundreds of instances of blackface employed in the past twenty years. Everyone from Paris Hilton to Ben Stiller and Jimmy Fallon to Billy Crystal has donned a form of blackface in an attempt to be funny, controversial, or — in Hilton’s case — cute. (The things people will do for a laugh.)

The most recent use of blackface is by a repeat offender, Chris Lilley (pictured above), who is the star of the new HBO series, Jonah from Tonga. The series, which follows the story of a Tongan teenager, features Lilley in brownface make-up and a curly wig. In other series, the actor has portrayed S.mouse, an African American rap artist from California and Jen Okazaki, a Japanese mother of three.

There is no question that blackface is a racist trope too regularly used on film, TV, and in magazines. While not nearly as rampant as it was in the 1930s, there have been hundreds of instances of blackface employed in the past twenty years. Everyone from Paris Hilton to Ben Stiller and Jimmy Fallon to Billy Crystal has donned a form of blackface in an attempt to be funny, controversial, or — in Hilton’s case — cute. (The things people will do for a laugh.)

The most recent use of blackface is by a repeat offender, Chris Lilley (pictured above), who is the star of the new HBO series, Jonah from Tonga. The series, which follows the story of a Tongan teenager, features Lilley in brownface make-up and a curly wig. In other series, the actor has portrayed S.mouse, an African American rap artist from California and Jen Okazaki, a Japanese mother of three.

Czech-born actor best known as Inspector Clouseau's crazed boss in the Pink Panther films

Herbert Lom, who has died aged 95, spent more than 50 years in dramatic roles, playing mostly smooth villains, but he was best known for his portrayal of Charles Dreyfus, the hysterically twitching boss of the bumbling Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) in the series of slapstick Pink Panther comedies. "Give me 10 men like Clouseau and I could destroy the world," blurts out the bewildered Dreyfus in A Shot in the Dark (1964).

Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru was born into an impoverished aristocratic family in Prague. He studied philosophy at Prague University, where he organised student theatre. In 1939, on the eve of the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, he arrived in Britain with his Jewish girlfriend, Didi, but she was sent back at Dover because she did not have the correct papers. Her subsequent death in a concentration...