Catherine O’Hara, the gifted Canadian comic actor who gave life to a flurry of iconic movie and television characters in everything from SCTV sketches, to big-screen hits like Beetlejuice and Home Alone, and the wildly successful sitcom Schitt’s Creek, has died.
On Friday, O’Hara’s agent confirmed that the 71-year-old died in her Los Angeles home “following a brief illness.”
The sudden death of O’Hara, whose career spanned some 50 years, beginning with the foundational sketch comedy show SCTV alongside her frequent collaborator and fellow Canadian Eugene Levy, shocked Hollywood, and tributes from co-stars, friends, politicians and fans poured in for the actor.
“What a gift to have gotten to dance in the warm glow of Catherine O’Hara’s brilliance for all those years,” wrote Dan Levy, Eugene Levy’s son in an Instagram tribute. He starred alongside his father and O’Hara, who played his parents on Schitt’s Creek.
“Having spent over fifty years collaborating with my Dad, Catherine was extended family before she ever played my family,” he wrote. “It’s hard to imagine a world without her in it. I will cherish every funny memory I was fortunate enough to make with her.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney and his predecessor Justin Trudeau also offered their condolences while remarking on O’Hara’s impact on Canadian culture.
What made Catherine O’Hara such a comedic genius
O’Hara gained big-screen attention for supporting roles in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours and Mike Nichols’ Heartburn, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice and two Home Alone movies. She and Levy would also go on to become prominent members of Christopher Guest’s stable of improv actors.
But her first big break came while working as a waitress at Toronto’s Second City Theatre on Adelaide Street, where she watched the performers on stage and thought to herself, “I’d love to do that.”
She joined Second City in her early 20s as an understudy to the late Gilda Radner, before she left for Saturday Night Live. (O’Hara herself was briefly hired for SNL in 1981, but she quit before ever appearing on air.)
O’Hara joined the touring company, then became a regular cast member on its television show, SCTV, performing with Levy and fellow Canadian comedy legends John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas and Martin Short.
O’Hara became known for playing charismatic and oddball supporting characters.
She played a deranged ice cream truck driver in After Hours — Scorsese’s 1985 dark comedy about a man’s terrible and unexpected night.
In Burton’s 1988 film Beetlejuice she was the self-centred and melodramatic mother of a teenage girl who makes friends with ghosts haunting the family home, a role she would reprise in the 2024 sequel.
Unhinged mother figures became somewhat of a calling card for O’Hara, and in one of her biggest roles, she played a harried mother of five who accidentally leaves her youngest son, Kevin, (Macaulay Culkin), home alone at Christmas.
Though the Home Alone movies were a breakout role for Culkin, O’Hara also earned praise for her warm-hearted portrayal of a mother desperate to get back to her child.
The two remained friends long after they starred in the hit movies together and she appeared with him in December 2023 when he received a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.
“Mama. I thought we had time,” Culkin wrote in an Instagram tribute to his on-screen mother. “I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you. But I had so much more to say. I love you.”
Though Big Hollywood roles didn’t follow Home Alone‘s success, O’Hara would find her groove with the crew of improv pros brought together by Guest for a series of mockumentaries that began with 1996’s Waiting for Guffman and continued with Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration.
Best in Show, arguably the biggest hit, saw Levy and O’Hara reunite to play Gerry and Cookie Fleck, a married couple who take their Norwich terrier to a dog show and constantly run into Cookie’s former lovers along the way.
“I am devastated,” Guest said in a statement to The Associated Press. “We have lost one of the comic giants of our age.”
More recently, O’Hara took on the role of another mom — the dramatic, spoiled and vivacious family matriarch of the Rose family in CBC’s Schitt’s Creek, where she again worked with Levy, who played her husband.
O’Hara’s scene-stealing Moira Rose, with her particular, affected way of speaking, had as many hilarious one-liners as she did wigs.
The portrayal earned her an Emmy Award for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award and six Canadian screen awards, among other accolades.
When O’Hara accepted her 2019 Canadian Screen Award, she expressed gratitude for the role.
“I’m so proud to be involved in a show that laughs at the ridiculous of all that we are without malice or homophobia or racism or ageism,” she said, visibly emotional.
“It’s a lovely thing to be a part of something that just might inspire us, while we’re laughing, to let go of our lesser selves and love others as we would be loved.”
Canadian Screen Awards 2019: Catherine O’Hara acceptance speech
In 2017, O’Hara received the Governor General’s Award of Canada for being a “cultural trailblazer” who “helped pave the way for the next generation of women in comedy.”
She was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2018, and was the 2021 recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.
Born and raised in Toronto, O’Hara was the sixth of seven children in a Catholic family of Irish descent.
She graduated from Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute, an alternative high school, where she said she first fell in love with theatre.
“I was always being silly, but didn’t have much control over it, so nobody else took it too seriously, so I guess I didn’t myself,” O’Hara said in 1978 interview on CBC’s Canada After Dark.
“But when I got into theatre arts in high school I got really involved in it then.”
Catherine O’Hara gets serious about comedy
She credited her relatively hands-off teacher for inspiring creativity in the classroom.
“She gave us a lot of freedom and we should just improvise, write scenes and plays on our own and that was great experience for improvising,” O’Hara said.
She met her husband, production designer Bo Welch, on the set of Beetlejuice. They married in 1992 and had two children, sons Matthew and Luke.
For all the accolades and awards she received, O’Hara told CBC Arts back in 2023 that her greatest legacy was the love of her family.
“I want my kids to love me; that’s all.”
Her final roles, both Emmy nominated, would be a dramatic turn as therapist to Pedro Pascal and other survivors in HBO’s post-apocalyptic hit The Last of Us, and as Seth Rogen’s reluctant executive mentor and freelance fixer in The Studio.
She was also nominated for a Golden Globe for her work on the show, but was notably absent from the Jan. 11 ceremony.
“Getting to work with her was a true honour. She was hysterical, kind, intuitive, generous,” Rogen said. “She made me want to make our show good enough to be worthy of her presence in it.”
Earlier this month, Rogen shared a photo on Instagram of him and O’Hara shooting the second season of The Studio.
O’Hara is survived by her husband and two sons, along with her siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O‘Hara, Tom O’Hara and Patricia Wallice.
Catherine O’Hara ‘transcended genres, generations’: Canadian comedian
