Catherine O'Hara, Comedy Legend And Star Of Home Alone And Schitt's Creek, Has Died At 71

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, whose brilliance stretched from her uproarious work on the Canadian sketch comedy show SCTV to her Primetime Emmy Award-winning portrayal of Moira Rose on "Schitt's Creek," has died at the age of 71. Variety has confirmed that she passed away at her home in Los Angeles "following a brief illness."

Truly, O'Hara's impact on film and television cannot be overstated. She was a double-threat on "SCTV" as an actor and a writer and won a Primetime Emmy for the latter in 1982 via her work on the classic "Moral Majority" episode, in which station manager Guy Caballero (Joe Flaherty) shamelessly kowtows to his advertisers' demands for changes to their programming. Her characters were myriad, but some of my favorites were singer/actor Lola Heatherton, Dusty Towne, Brooke Shields, and over-eager Hi-Q contestant Margaret Meehan (who drives Eugene Levy's Alex Trebek into a rage by buzzing in with answers before he's read the questions).

O'Hara was still on "SCTV" when she began dabbling in movies as well. She made her film debut in the critically panned Canadian rom-com "Nothing Personal," but, fortunately, it was a small role. In the end, she didn't break through in movies until 1985, when she wholesale heisted scenes playing a perky Mister Softee driver turned vigilante in Martin Scorsese's dark comedy classic "After Hours." She was also terrific as a Washington D.C. gossip queen in Mike Nichols' "Heartburn," but she didn't get to fully flaunt her gaudy stuff until she played Delia Deetz in Tim Burton's box office hit "Beetlejuice."

Catherine O'Hara's Delia Deetz is a pretentious postmodern sculptor who plans to turn the charming country house she's bought with her straight-laced husband Charles (Jeffrey Jones) into an 1980s New Wave nightmare. O'Hara has a ball reveling in Deetz's delusional existence (she mistakenly believes she's a superb sculptor) and hurtles herself into the film's standout "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" scene with the same aplomb she brought to her characters on "SCTV." For most moviegoers, O'Hara's performance was a revelation. And she was so indelible in this role that many viewers were stunned to see her play a very different kind of mother in Chris Columbus' "Home Alone" two years later.

"Home Alone" obviously belongs to Macauley Culkin's Kevin McCallister and the buffoonish thieves played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. Nevertheless, O'Hara carves out the film's fullest character arc as Kate McCallister, who realizes that she's not only left Kevin at home, but she's also overlooked his emotional needs. It's hard to imagine "Home Alone" becoming the heartwarming Christmas viewing tradition that it is without her performance.

O'Hara later reunited with Tim Burton by giving tender voice to Sally opposite Chris Sarandon/Danny Elfman's Jack Skellington in "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (which, of course, was directed by Henry Selick), but the astonishing versatility that launched her career on "SCTV" would be on full display when she joined Christopher Guest's acting troupe for a quartet of masterful, improvisation-heavy comedies. Indeed, Guest's films "Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show," "A Mighty Wind" and the hugely underrated "For Your Consideration" presented four deliriously funny yet palpably human sides of O'Hara.

Catherine O'Hara's Sheila Albertson from "Waiting for Guffman" should be instantly identifiable to anyone who's participated in community productions, while her "Best of Show" character, Cookie Fleck, is an endearing Norwich terrier owner whose promiscuous past puts her husband Gerry (Eugene Levy) on edge. For "A Mighty Wind," however, O'Hara dramatically shifts gears as Mickey Crabbe, one-half of the once-popular folk duo Mitch & Mickey, and her scenes with Levy's Mickey are equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking. Finally, O'Hara's "For Your Consideration" character, Marilyn Hack, allows her to riff on her Lola Heatherton persona, although there's a queasy desperation to the veteran actor that really punches you in the heart.

O'Hara continued to work in film after that, but she found her next wheelhouse role as former soap opera actor Moira Rose in "Schitt's Creek" (a role she nearly rejected) The CBC's sitcom got off to a rocky start, but once the writing rose to the towering level of the talented cast, it became a critical darling, winning O'Hara her first and only Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.

Finally, in 2025, O'Hara gave two very different performances in Apple TV's film industry satire "The Studio" and HBO's horror series "The Last of Us." She'd never been better, and I was particularly eager to see her return as ex-studio head Patty Leigh in the former. But more than that, I dreamed of her reuniting with her longtime screen partner Levy. They were inarguably one of the greatest comedy duos of all time, and I yearned for her to surprise us once again with the kind of magic only she could conjure. It's impossible to sum up her greatness in one word, but I'll try: computers.