Canadian actress and screenwriter Catherine O'Hara has died at her home in Los Angeles, following a brief illness, according to her agent and manager. She was 71 years old and was known for absurdist comedy. She enjoyed a six-decade career in TV and film playing sometimes over-the-top, but endearing characters.
In one of her most memorable roles, O'Hara played the freaked-out mom of rascally son Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) in two Home Alone movies. Later, she portrayed the self-centered, whiny matriarch in the riches-to-rags TV sitcom Schitt's Creek — a role for which she earned an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award in 2020.
She won her first Emmy in 1982 for writing on the Canadian sketch comedy TV series Second City Television, or SCTV. She cofounded the show, and created characters such as the show biz has-been Lola Heatherton.
"I loved playing cocky untalented people," O'Hara told Fresh Air in 1992.
On SCTV in the '70s and '80s, she teamed up with another Canadian comic actor, Eugene Levy. Together, they — along with an ensemble — went on to perform in a string of films by director Christopher Guest.
O'Hara and Levy were dog trainers in the Guest's mockumentary Best in Show. And they were a folk-singing duo in A Mighty Wind.
O'Hara and Levy also acted together as the parents in Schitt's Creek. More recently, O'Hara acted with another Canadian, Seth Rogen, in his Apple TV comedy The Studio. She played a movie studio head who gets pushed aside.
O'Hara was born and raised in Toronto, and got her start as an understudy for Gilda Radner at the Second City Theater in Toronto.
She reportedly met her production designer husband Bo Welch on the set of the 1988 movie Beetlejuice. She reprised her spiritually possessed role in the 2024 sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Since the news of her death some of her famous friends have paid tribute to her online.
"Mama. I thought we had time. 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." wrote actor Macaulay Culkin.
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