Catherine O’Hara, the comedic actress best known for her starring roles in the Home Alone and Beetlejuice films, as well as her Emmy-winning turn in Schitt’s Creek, has died aged 71.
The Canadian star rose to fame through Toronto’s Second City improvisation troupe and on SCTV, before making a name for herself in the US in 1988’s Beetlejuice and as the matriarch in the holiday classic Home Alone.
O’Hara, whose colleagues remembered her as a “wonderful person, artist and collaborator”, who most recently appeared in the Emmy-winning comedy The Studio and HBO’s The Last of Us. O’Hara made lightning strike twice in her career with indelible cinematic turns. In 1988’s spooky satire Beetlejuice, she played Delia Deetz who led her possessed dinner guests in an enthralling song and dance performance of Day-O (the Banana Boat song).
One of the most iconic scenes from one of the most popular movie comedies ever is her frightened cry of “Kevin!” in Home Alone, two years later, when she learns her cheeky eight-year-old son has been abandoned during their Christmas vacation.
Her young co-star Macaulay Culkin, now 45, paid tribute to his on-screen mother on Friday, sharing images of the two of them from the film and in later years: “Mama. I thought we had time. 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 Toronto-born actress got her foot in the door as a waitress at the Toronto Second City theatre franchise in the 1970s, before auditioning for a role with the famed acting troupe.
She further developed her comedic chops after joining the cast of sketch comedy show Second City Television (SCTV) – one of the most successful Canadian TV programmes ever – alongside the likes of Eugene Levy and the late John Candy.
She has credited her Canadian roots with helping develop her sense of humour.
In 2020, she told Rolling Stone that growing up Canadian didn’t have the same sense of nationalism or patriotism that she saw in the US.
“And that’s a good thing because it does make you look outside of yourself and be aware of the world and not take yourself seriously,” she said.
“And I think Canadians have not only a sense of humour about others but also about themselves.” Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney joined Canadians and fans across the world in mourning O’Hara. “Over 5 decades of work, Catherine earned her place in the canon of Canadian comedy — from the iconic Toronto production of Godspell to SCTV to Schitt’s Creek,” he said. “Canada has lost a legend.”
O’Hara also collaborated with Christopher Guest and co-writer Eugene Levy four times, including on the critically acclaimed mockumentary films Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration. Her role as character actress Marilyn Hack in For Your Consideration earned her the 2006 National Board of Review Award for supporting actress.
In a statement to Variety, Guest said he was devastated and that “we have lost one of the comic giants of our age”. O’Hara had a late career surge thanks to the Canadian comedy series Schitt’s Creek that became one of the biggest hits of the Covid lockdown.
The fish-out-of-water comedy show followed the wealthy Rose family as they abruptly lose their money and mansion, and are forced to move into a shabby motel in a deadbeat town they bought as a joke.
Upon winning the Emmy Award for actress in a comedy, O’Hara thanked her co-stars Eugene and Dan Levy for giving her the opportunity to play “a woman of a certain age – my age – who gets to fully be her ridiculous self”.
Dan Levy who played her son David in the series, which he also co-wrote and produced, said it was a gift “to have gotten to dance in the warm glow of Catherine O’Hara’s brilliance”.
“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.”
O’Hara had continued working until very close to her death, playing a therapist in HBO’s sci-fi drama The Last of Us and an ousted movie executive in Seth Rogen’s The Studio just last year.
In The Studio she played Patty Leigh, a studio boss replaced by Rogen’s character, who pursues more creative roles as a film producer and makes her way to the Golden Globes – a stage that O’Hara was no stranger to. She won a Golden Globe award for best actress in 2021 for her role in Schitt’s Creek and was nominated for her role in The Studio at this year’s awards.
She is also nominated at the Actor Awards (formerly the Screen Actors Guild Awards), which take place in March, for her role as Patty.
Rogen on Friday said that when he first met O’Hara, he told her she “was the funniest person I’d ever had the pleasure of watching on screen” and that Home Alone was the film that made him want to make movies.
“Getting to work with her was a true honour,” he wrote on Instagram. “She was hysterical, kind, intuitive, generous… 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.”
Film director Judd Apatow, replying to Rogen’s post, added: “Brilliant and kind. Riotously funny for fifty years. A really special person.”
O’Hara is survived by her husband Bo Welch and sons Matthew and Luke, as well as her siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O’Hara, Tom O’Hara, and Patricia Wallice.
