Beloved actress Mary Tyler Moore has passed away at 80, according to her agent.

Born on December 29, 1936 in Brooklyn, Moore received her start in television commercials before making a name for herself as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Following the end of that show, Moore then blazed the way for other female leads breaking away from always being in a wife and mother role throughout the 1970’s on the self-titled Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Unlike primetime women who came before her, the Mary Tyler Moore Show heroine was nobody’s wife, widow, mother, or girlfriend. All this, and she was on the other side of 30, too. “The women’s movement more or less broke when we went on the air,” series co-creator Allan Burns told the Associated Press in 1973. “Rather than fight it, Mary has become increasingly independent.”

Today Mary Richards and her DNA can be found in nearly every major female character in primetime.

It’s only been in recent years that the delegation of being a television actress meant you would probably never be in the movies, but after spending well over a decade of being on the small screen, Moore received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her role in Ordinary People.

In recent years, she reunited with Mary Tyler Moore Show co-star, Betty White, on the series Hot in Cleveland.