{"id":267083,"date":"2026-01-31T12:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/267083\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T12:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:15:09","slug":"home-alone-actress-catherine-ohara-dies-at-71","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/267083\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Alone actress Catherine O’Hara dies at 71"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Los Angeles: Catherine O\u2019Hara, a gifted Canadian-born comic actor and \u201cSCTV\u201d alum who starred as Macaulay Culkin\u2019s harried mother in two \u201cHome Alone\u201d movies and won an Emmy as the dramatically ditzy wealthy matriarch Moira Rose in \u201cSchitt\u2019s Creek,\u201d died Friday. She was 71.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Hara died at her home in Los Angeles \u201cfollowing a brief illness,\u201d according to a statement from her agency, Creative Artists Agency. Further details were not immediately available.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Hara\u2019s career was launched at the Second City in Toronto in the in 1970s. It was there that she first worked with Eugene Levy, who would become a lifelong collaborator \u2014 and her \u201cSchitt\u2019s Creek\u201d costar. The two would be among the original cast of the sketch show \u201cSCTV,\u201d short for \u201cSecond City Television.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The series, which began on Canadian TV in the 1970s and aired on NBC in the US in the early \u201980s, spawned a legendary group of esoteric comedians including Martin Short, John Candy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis and Joe Flaherty.<\/p>\n

Hollywood didn\u2019t entirely know what to do with O\u2019Hara and her scattershot style. She played oddball supporting characters in Martin Scorsese\u2019s 1985 \u201cAfter Hours\u201d and Tim Burton\u2019s 1988 \u201cBeetlejuice\u201d \u2014 a role she would reprise in the 2024 sequel.<\/p>\n

She played it mostly straight as a horrified mother who accidentally abandoned her child in the two \u201cHome Alone\u201d movies. The films were among the biggest box office earners of the early 1990s and their Christmas setting made them TV perennials<\/p>\n

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Her co-star Culkin was among those paying her tribute Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cMama, I thought we had time,\u201d Culkin said on Instagram alongside an image from \u201cHome Alone\u201d and a recent recreation of the same pose. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meryl Streep, who worked with O\u2019Hara in \u201cHeartburn,\u201d said in a statement that she \u201cbrought love and light to our world, through whipsmart compassion for the collection of eccentrics she portrayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Hara would find her groove with the crew of improv pros brought together by Christopher Guest for a series of mockumentaries that began with 1996\u2019s \u201cWaiting for Guffman\u201d and continued with 2000\u2019s \u201cBest in Show,\u201d 2003\u2019s \u201cA Mighty Wind\u201d and 2006\u2019s \u201cFor Your Consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBest in Show\u201d was the biggest hit and best remembered film of the series. It sees her paired as Levy\u2019s wife as the couple, Gerry and Cookie Fleck, takes their Norwich terrier to a dog show, and constantly run into Cookie\u2019s former lovers along the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am devastated,\u201d Guest said in a statement to The Associated Press. \u201cWe have lost one of the comic giants of our age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Toronto, O\u2019Hara was the sixth of seven children in a Catholic family of Irish descent. She graduated from Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute, an alternative high school. She joined Second City in her early 20s, as an understudy to Gilda Radner before Radner left for \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d (O\u2019Hara would briefly be hired for \u201cSNL\u201d but quit before appearing on air.)<\/p>\n

Nearly 50 years later, \u201cSchitt\u2019s Creek\u201d would be a career-capping triumph and the perfect personification of her comic talents. The small show created by Levy and his son, Dan, about a wealthy family forced to live in a tiny town would dominate the Emmys in its sixth and final season. It brought O\u2019Hara, always a beloved figure, a new generation of fans and put her at the center of cultural attention.<\/p>\n

She told The Associated Press that she pictured Moira, a former soap opera star, as someone who had married rich and wanted to \u201cremind everyone that (she was) special, too.\u201d With an exaggerated Mid-Atlantic accent and obscure vocabulary, Moira spoke unlike anyone else, using words like \u201cfrippet,\u201d \u201cpettifogging\u201d and \u201cunasinous,\u201d to show her desire to be different, O\u2019Hara said. To perfect Moira\u2019s voice, O\u2019Hara would pore through old vocabulary books, \u201cMoira-izing\u201d the dialogue even further than what was already written.<\/p>\n

The show also brought a career renaissance that led to a dramatic turn as therapist to Pedro Pascal and other dystopia survivors on HBO\u2019s \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d and a straitlaced comic role as Seth Rogen\u2019s reluctant mentor and freelance fixer on \u201cThe Studio,\u201d both of which earned her Emmy nominations.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, genius to be near you,\u201d Pascal said on Instagram. \u201cEternally grateful. There is less light in my world.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Hara is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, sons Matthew and Luke, and siblings Michael O\u2019Hara, Mary Margaret O\u2019Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus OHara, Tom O\u2019Hara and Patricia Wallice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles: Catherine O\u2019Hara, a gifted Canadian-born comic actor and \u201cSCTV\u201d alum who starred as Macaulay Culkin\u2019s harried…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[139289,146,2085,139616,107740,85,46,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-267083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-catherine-ohara","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hollywood","11":"tag-hollywood-actress","12":"tag-home-alone","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}