Catherine O’Hara, ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and ‘Home Alone’ star, dies at 71
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Catherine O’Hara embodied some of the most memorable matriarchs on film and television.
On “Schitt’s Creek,” she portrayed Moira Rose, a nonsensical and narcissistic former soap star known as much for her eccentric wigs and designer wardrobe as her dramatics. In “Beetlejuice” she was Delia Deetz, the culture-vulture sculptor who tries to use her stepdaughter’s connection with ghosts for her own benefit.
For a certain generation, she is perhaps most beloved for her role as the caring but harried mother of five who somehow manages to lose track of her youngest son during Christmastime — twice.
O’Hara, the comedy legend who also starred in such classics as “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” has died. She was 71.
Macaulay Culkin, Eugene Levy, Michael Keaton, Seth Rogen and other stars paid tribute to Catherine O’Hara after her death on Friday at age 71.
O’Hara died Friday at her home in Los Angeles after a brief illness, her agency CAA confirmed. No other details were available.
“After ‘Home Alone’ opened, I went to see it at a Saturday matinee packed with shiny, happy children and their parents,” O’Hara said in a speech honoring the film’s star, Macaulay Culkin, at his Hollywood Walk of Fame induction ceremony in late 2023. “At one point, I saw two boys get up out of their seats, so not wanting to leave the movie ... they starting running up the aisle and then suddenly, panicked that they might miss something great, they turned around, looked back at the screen and one of them said, ‘It’s OK ... it’s just the mom.’”
But those who associate O’Hara’s panicked shout of “Kevin!” with the holidays will tell you, she was never “just the mom.”
“What most people don’t realize is that Catherine carries the weight of 50% of that film,” “Home Alone” director Chris Columbus said in a statement Friday to the Hollywood Reporter. “The movie simply would not work without her extraordinary performance. Catherine grounds the picture with a profound emotional depth.”
The Canadian actor was a versatile performer whose decades-long career took her from a comedy troupe to box office and television hits. Here are some of her best roles.
Born on March 4, 1954, in Toronto, O’Hara was the second youngest of seven sisters and brothers. She once told The Times that her family would be a good basis for a screenplay.
“If I ever finally sit down to write a script, it would be about my family,” she said in 1988. “We’re very close, but there’s this really emotionally up-and-down atmosphere that prevails whenever we’re together.”
A huge figure in Hollywood for more than four decades, O’Hara first broke out in “SCTV,” or “Second City Television,” a Canadian sketch comedy series for which she earned an Emmy Award for writing in 1982, along with her “Schitt’s Creek” co-star Eugene Levy. The pair’s collaborations also include four mockumentaries directed by Christopher Guest (and co-written by Levy): “Waiting for Guffman” (1996), “Best in Show” (2000), “A Mighty Wind” (2003) and “For Your Consideration” (2006).
A comedic scene-stealer who honed her skills in improv, O’Hara’s true talent was in her ability to convey the humanity of her characters, no matter how zany or eccentric, regardless of the type of material. She was also a master of physical comedy, which she showcased throughout her career.
O’Hara won her second Emmy in 2020, for lead actress in a comedy, for her role in “Schitt’s Creek,” which she starred in for six seasons. She also won a Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild Awards for the role.
Catherine O’Hara on ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and the cult of Moira Rose: ‘I’m surprised by the whole thing.’
In Moira Rose, the matriarch of the Emmy-nominated “Schitt’s Creek,” Catherine O’Hara has found the role of a lifetime and created a character that hilariously redefines the term “fashion victim.”
“I love playing Moira,” O’Hara told The Times in 2019. “I just wanted to create a character that I could live with for more than one season, because I had never committed to one character for any length of time [before].”
When approached to play Moira, “it took me a few moments to commit,” O’Hara told The Times in 2016. “I already trusted Eugene as a writer and an actor, and as a good man who I could stand to spend time with.”
More recently, she portrayed ousted studio head turned film producer Patty Leigh in the Apple TV comedy “The Studio” as well as widowed therapist Gail in HBO’s survival drama “The Last of Us.” Both performances earned her Emmy nominations last year.
“Catherine’s so good, maybe too good,” director Tim Burton, who worked with the actor on “Beetlejuice” as well as “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” told The Times in 1988. “She works on levels that people don’t even know. I think she scares people because she operates at such high levels.”
Levy, her longtime collaborator, shared a similar sentiment in 2016.
“Catherine really goes above and beyond in terms of what she brings creatively to whatever she’s doing,” he said. “A lot of great ideas she brought to the role [like] the idea that Moira wears wigs that represent her different moods was just an amazing touch [that] opened up so many doors on this show.”
Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and the cast of Apple TV+’s inside-baseball Hollywood comedy ‘The Studio’ stopped by the L.A. Times studio at SXSW.
After the news of her death, many of O’Hara’s friends and colleagues shared tributes.
“Mama. I thought we had time,” her “Home Alone” son Culkin captioned a photo of them on Instagram. “I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you but I had so much more to say,” he wrote. “I love you. I’ll see you later.”
“I’m stunned and heartbroken, along with the rest of the world,” Columbus said in his statement to the Hollywood Reporter. “I was an obsessive fan of Catherine’s brilliant comedic work on ‘SCTV’ and was thrilled when she agreed to play Kevin’s mom in ‘Home Alone.’ ... I will miss her greatly. Yet there is a small sense of comfort, realizing that two of the finest human beings I’ve ever known, Catherine and John Candy, are together again, brilliantly improvising, making each other laugh.”
“I rarely think of my age. But sometimes you have to,” O’Hara said when asked to reflect on her career in 2019. “I’m grateful to be alive, let alone having a fun job. I’ve been able to do this show where I get to play this ridiculous but lovely character [Moira]. And I’ve been able to collaborate and play with my dialogue. And to have stories that weren’t just about death, divorce and disease, which are pretty much the story lines for people past a certain age.”
O’Hara is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, and sons Matthew and Luke, along with siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O‘Hara, Tom O’Hara and Patricia Wallice.
