Comedy legend Catherine O’Hara has died. A mainstay of the big and small screen, O’Hara gave audiences decades of memorable performances, from SCTV to Home Alone to Schitt’s Creek. O’Hara was 71; no cause of death has yet been reported.
Born on March 4, 1954, Catherine Anne O’Hara began performing with the Second City comedy troupe in her hometown of Toronto, Ontario. Along with several of her fellow members, including Eugene Levy, John Candy, and Harold Ramis, she was part of the initial cast of the sketch comedy TV series SCTV, launching her as a comedy star. She played a variety of characters, including washed-up singer Lola Heatheron and raunchy comedienne Dusty Towne; she won an Emmy for her writing on the series. She was hired to join Saturday Night Live in 1981, but chose to remain with SCTV, not wanting to move to New York City; she maintained both Canadian and American citizenship. She eventually moved on from SCTV, and landed supporting roles in films like After Hours and Heartburn.
O’Hara made her big-screen breakout in 1988’s Beetlejuice, starring as self-obsessed would-be artist Delia Deetz; she would reprise the role to great acclaim decades later in 2024’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. She followed that up by starring in the biggest hit of her career in the form of 1990’s Home Alone as harried mother Kate McCallister, sharing the screen with SCTV co-star Candy. She subsequently became a comedy mainstay, becoming part of Christopher Guest‘s mockumentary troupe in Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind. She also lent her voice to a number of animated roles, including The Nightmare Before Christmas, Where the Wild Things Are, Elemental, and The Wild Robot.
O’Hara came to prominence again in 2015, starring as the matriarch of a dispossessed wealthy family in the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek, which became an international hit; she won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for her performance as the theatrical Moira Rose. Last year, she starred as former executive Patty Leigh on The Studio and as therapist Gail Lynden on The Last of Us, garnering Emmy nominations for both. O’Hara was always hard to define, by her own admission: in an interview with Vulture, she stated, “There are actresses who want to stick to one certain way, and there are actors like me who want to do a bunch of different characters. Don’t fence me in! Don’t lock me down! I want to do different things! I don’t know who I am!”
O’Hara married production designer Bo Welch in 1992; they met on the set of Beetlejuice, and have two sons. Collider extends our condolences to Catherine O’Hara‘s friends and family.
via Collider