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Catherine O'Hara, the Canadian-born performer celebrated for her work in film and television comedies including Home Alone, Beetlejuice and Schitt’s Creek, has died at the age of 71.
Her agent confirmed to the BBC that O’Hara passed away on Friday at her home in Los Angeles following a short illness. Tributes poured in from collaborators and admirers who described her as a singular talent and a generous creative partner.
O’Hara first established herself in Canada’s comedy scene, beginning in the 1970s at Toronto’s Second City theatre. After moving from waitressing to performing, she became a key figure on Second City Television (SCTV), the influential sketch series that helped launch a generation of comedians, including Eugene Levy and the late John Candy.
Her breakthrough to international audiences came in 1988 with Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, where she played the flamboyant Delia Deetz, memorably anchoring the film’s possessed dinner-party musical sequence. She followed that with another indelible role in Home Alone as the frantic mother who realises, mid-flight, that her young son has been left behind, a moment that became one of the most quoted scenes in modern holiday cinema.
Her on-screen son, Macaulay Culkin, shared a personal tribute, posting photographs from their time together and later reunions, writing that he wished they had had more time to talk and sit together.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, O’Hara built a parallel reputation in ensemble comedy, frequently collaborating with director and writer Christopher Guest on mockumentaries including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration. Her performance as an overlooked character actor in the latter earned her a National Board of Review award in 2006. Guest later called her “one of the great comic forces of our time.”
O’Hara experienced a major late-career resurgence with the global success of Schitt's Creek, which became a cultural phenomenon during the Covid lockdowns. As Moira Rose, a former soap star with an ever-shifting accent, theatrical wardrobe and razor-sharp delivery, she won the 2021 Emmy for best actress in a comedy series. Accepting the award, she thanked the show’s creators for allowing her to portray “a woman of my age who gets to be completely ridiculous.”
Dan Levy, who played her son on the series, described working with O’Hara as a privilege and said she felt like family long before the show began. He wrote that it was difficult to imagine the world without her.
O’Hara remained active almost until the end of her life, appearing in HBO’s The Last of Us as a therapist and starring as a displaced studio executive in The Studio, created by Seth Rogen. Her performance in The Studio earned her recent Golden Globe and Actor Award nominations.
Rogen said O’Hara was the funniest performer he had ever watched and credited Home Alone with inspiring his own filmmaking ambitions. Fellow director Judd Apatow described her as “brilliant, kind, and riotously funny for five decades.”
Born in Toronto, O’Hara often spoke about how her Canadian upbringing shaped her comic sensibility, once noting that it encouraged self-awareness and an ability to laugh at oneself. Canada’s prime minister called her a national legend whose influence stretched across generations.
Catherine O’Hara is survived by her husband, production designer Bo Welch; their sons, Matthew and Luke; and her siblings.
With information from BBC.
