Catherine O’Hara, star of Schitt’s Creek and Home Alone, dies aged 71

O’Hara’s character Moira was a particular delight, with her wildly fluctuating accent, outlandish fashion sense, and brilliant one-liners, like “Never assume, Twyla, because when you assume, it makes an ass out of… both of us.”

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”.

She 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.

With additional reporting by Jessica Murphy in Toronto and entertainment reporter Steven McIntosh.