Catherine O’Hara’s cause of death has been revealed to be a pulmonary embolism, with rectal cancer as an underlying condition, according to TMZ, which obtained her death certificate Monday.
She died on Friday, Jan. 30, at her Los Angeles home after being hospitalised early that morning with an illness. Paramedics had been called to her home at 4:48 a.m. that morning, according to Page Six. Her agency CAA said that O’Hara died after dealing with a “brief illness.”
Her career spanned more than 50 years, beginning on the Canadian sketch show “Second City Television,” for which she won the first Emmy of her career for writing. She went on to star as Delia Deetz, the mother of Winona Ryder’s Lydia, in Tim Burton’s classic horror film “Beetlejuice” in 1988. She reprised the role in Burton’s 2024 sequel, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” O’Hara rose to fame by playing another famous mother, Kate McCallister, in two “Home Alone” movies opposite Macaulay Culkin. She and Culkin, who starred as her son Kevin, stayed close throughout her life, and she honored him at his Walk of Fame ceremony in 2023.
“Mama. I thought we had time,” Culkin wrote on social media. “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.”
O’Hara reunited with Burton on his animated movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas” by voicing Sally, a singing rag doll who falls for Jack Skellington, and in “Frankenweenie.” She had a late career resurgence thanks to “Schitt’s Creek,” in which she starred as the riches-to-rags housewife Moira Rose with Dan and Eugene Levy and Annie Murphy. She won an Emmy for the role in 2020 and received two other nominations. O’Hara also appeared in “The Last of Us” and “The Studio,” nabbing two Emmy nominations in 2025.
From Variety US
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