Catherine O’Hara, the virtuosic comedic actor best known for her performances in the Christmas classic “Home Alone,” the mockumentary “Best in Show” and the cult-hit sitcom “Schitt’s Creek,” died Friday at her home in Los Angeles after a brief illness, her representatives said.
She was 71.
In an entertainment career spanning more than 50 years, O’Hara excelled at playing characters who were cartoonishly larger than life but recognizably human, theatrically vain but ultimately endearing.
She got her start in Canadian sketch comedy, performing and writing on the landmark show “Second City Television,” or “SCTV,” before ascending to Hollywood stardom with roles in such high-profile movies as Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice.”
She frequently collaborated with mockumentary pioneer Christopher Guest, becoming a key player in his ensemble of expert improvisers. She appeared in Guest’s beloved films “Waiting for Guffman,” “Best in Show” and “A Mighty Wind.”
In recent years, O’Hara enjoyed a late-career renaissance and introduced herself to a new generation of television viewers as the daffy former soap opera star Moira Rose on “Schitt’s Creek,” a defining role that earned her an Emmy Award in 2020.
In her acceptance speech, she thanked the show’s co-creators — the father-and-son duo Eugene and Dan Levy — for “the opportunity to play a woman of a certain age, my age, who gets to fully be her ridiculous self.”
She also joined the supporting casts of the acclaimed Apple TV+ show business satire “The Studio” and the post-apocalyptic HBO drama “The Last of Us,” adapted from a popular video game franchise of the same name.
“Oh, genius to be near you. Eternally grateful,” Pedro Pascal, the star of “The Last of Us,” posted on Instagram. “There is less light in my world, this lucky world that had you, will keep you, always.”
In 2021, O’Hara received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, the most prestigious honor bestowed on Canadian performers. “She is a cultural trailblazer whose international success has inspired many artists and helped pave the way for the next generation of women in comedy,” her citation read.
Catherine Anne O’Hara was born March 4, 1954, in Toronto. She launched her acting career with the famed Second City comedy troupe, a formative experience she later described as her personal “university.”
“I learned writing, scene structure, character development,” O’Hara was later quoted as saying. “Everything I’m still tapping into, and I was fortunate to meet all those wonderful, talented people with whom I still get to work.”
O’Hara and her other Second City peers — including future stars such as John Candy, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis and Martin Short — brought their sketch talents to television with the influential “SCTV” series, Canada’s answer to NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”
“SCTV” brought O’Hara her first Emmy Award, for outstanding writing, and served as her entrée to Hollywood.
O’Hara picked up television work throughout the early 1980s before gaining wider notice with parts in mainstream Hollywood features, including Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” (1985) and Mike Nichols’ “Heartburn” (1986). “Beetlejuice” (1988) gave her a signature role as the eccentric sculptor Delia Deetz.
She kicked off the 1990s with one of her most enduring performances, as Macaulay Culkin’s beleaguered mom in “Home Alone,” a staple of the holiday season. She reprised the role in a sequel, “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” released in 1992.
“Mama. I thought we had time,” Culkin wrote on Instagram in a tribute to O’Hara. “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. I’ll see you later.”
The middle period of O’Hara’s career was defined by a mix of voice roles (including in Disney’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas”), independent films, TV appearances and celebrated turns in Guest’s send-up of documentary filmmaking conventions.
In the cult classic “Best in Show” (2000), O’Hara played Norwich terrier owner Cookie Fleck, a flamboyant Floridian married to a hapless man (Eugene Levy) cursed with two left feet. “A Mighty Wind” saw her as a folk singer who reunites with her ex-partner, also played by Levy.
O’Hara was already seen as comedy royalty by the time “Schitt’s Creek” premiered in 2015 on Canada’s CBC Television. The series, the tale of a wealthy family forced to start from scratch in the middle-of-nowhere town of the title, amassed a cult following during the pandemic.
“Schitt’s Creek” reached the apex of its popularity in late 2020, sweeping all seven major comedy categories at the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards.
“What a gift to have gotten to dance in the warm glow of Catherine O’Hara’s brilliance for all those years,” Dan Levy, who played O'Hara's son “Schitt’s Creek,” wrote on Instagram. “Having spent over fifty years collaborating with my Dad, Catherine was extended family before she ever played my family. It’s hard to imagine a world without her in it.”
After “Schitt’s Creek” came “The Studio,” co-starring O’Hara as a former Hollywood studio chief opposite Seth Rogen’s aspiring mogul, and “The Last of Us,” with O’Hara as Pascal’s character’s therapist. She received Emmy nominations for both.
In a post on Instagram, Rogen said he was in disbelief. “Really don’t know what to say… I told O’Hara when I first met her I thought she was the funniest person I’d ever had the pleasure of watching on screen,” he wrote.
“She was hysterical, kind, intuitive, generous,” Rogen added. “She made me want to make our show good enough to be worthy of her presence in it. This is just devastating. We’re all lucky we got to live in a world with her in it.”
O’Hara is survived by her husband, production designer Bo Welch, and two children.
