R.I.P. Catherine O'Hara, legendary comic actor

O'Hara, who starred in Schitt's Creek, Home Alone, and much more, was 71.

By Matt Schimkowitz | January 30, 2026 | 1:33pm

Image: Nick Agro / ©A.M.P.A.S.

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R.I.P. Catherine O'Hara, legendary comic actor

Catherine O’Hara has died. Best known for her blend of high-energy comedy and deeply felt humanity across the films of Tim Burton and Christopher Guest, O’Hara has been a staple of Hollywood comedy since her television debut in the late ’70s. Variety confirmed her death via O’Hara’s manager. The beloved star of Home Alone, Beetlejuice, Schitt’s Creek, and countless other hit comedies over the last four decades was 71.

Born in Toronto on March 4, 1954, O’Hara made her start in comedy as the 20-year-old understudy to Gilda Radner at the famed Canadian comedy theater The Second City. After Radner left for Lorne Michaels’ Saturday Night Live, O’Hara filled in and soon became a star performer. When the theater stage gave way to television, O’Hara was a creator, writer, and star of the groundbreaking sketch series SCTV, alongside John Candy, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, Martin Short, and Eugene Levy, with whom she would remain a collaborator for decades. Impersonating Lucille Ball, Tammy Faye Bakker, Katharine Hepburn, and her old friend Gilda Radner, O’Hara demonstrated her range as a performer and her aptitude for high-status roles.

When SCTV ended in 1984, O’Hara hit Hollywood Blvd running, landing roles opposite Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep in Mike Nichols’ Heartburn and as an obnoxious ice cream truck driver in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. Following Anjelica Huston’s reported exit from the production of Beetlejuice, director Tim Burton, coming off Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, wanted O’Hara for Delia Deetz, the film’s pretentious artworld matriarch. The actor initially declined the role, but after Burton hopped on a plane to meet with her personally, O’Hara relented. As the temporarily embarrassed urbanite forced to live with her thoughts in the sticks, O’Hara skewered the bohemians with magnetic charisma, keeping the film’s energy high long before Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice makes his appearance. Not only did Beetlejuice give O’Hara her first iconic screen role, but it was on the set that she met her husband, Burton’s then-production designer Bo Welch, whom she married in 1992.

Following turns in Dick Tracy and Martin Short’s short-lived The Completely Mental Misadventures Of Ed Grimley, O’Hara signed on to play Kate McCallister in the family boobytrap Christmas comedy Home Alone. The role didn’t require O’Hara to throw paint cans or get electrocuted, but rather to give the film its emotional center as a mother desperately trying to get back to the son she accidentally abandoned. O’Hara instantly became one of cinema’s most revered fainters as her shriek, “Kevin!” became as familiar a holiday phrase as “’tis the season.” She’d return for the sequel Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, again hitting her famous faint and catchphrase.

Throughout the ’90s, O’Hara continued to vary her roles, playing Calamity Jane in Tall Tale and lending her voice to two characters in the Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas: the mischievous trick-or-treater, Shock, and the romantic lead and sad ragdoll, Sally. In 1996, she reunited with many of her Second City alums for Christopher Guest’s Waiting For Guffman. Playing the delusional travel agent and community theater vet Shelia Albertson, O’Hara played off the unflappable Fred Willard in the first of four collaborations with Guest. 2000’s Best In Show allowed her to go even deeper into the mind of the downtrodden middle-class dreamer as Cookie Fleck, the optimistic owner of Winky, her beloved Norwich terrier and inspiration for the song, “God Loves A Terrier.” Paired with Eugene Levy, O’Hara grounded the film’s over-the-top characters as half of the put-upon couple facing perpetual inconvenience as they move up the ranks of the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show.

Levy and O’Hara would find even greater heights as Mitch and Mickey, the long-estranged folk duo from A Mighty Wind. The film’s emotional plot focuses on their performance of their ’60s hit, “A Kiss At The End Of The Rainbow,” culminating in a beautiful and heart-wrenching finale. Though the pair would again star in Guest’s For Your Consideration, Levy and O’Hara’s partnership didn’t become a national concern again until they both experienced a career revival as Moira and Johnny Rose on the unlikely deep-cable hit, Schitt’s Creek, which would net O’Hara her second Emmy. The show was a smash with critics and audiences alike, who were ready to elevate O’Hara to the highest tier of comedy stars. For their part, O’Hara and Levy worked magic as an eccentric but grounded couple on the series for six seasons, as O’Hara added new vocabulary words into the pop-culture lexicon.

“Eugene and I, without even talking about it, individually decided that we would be a solid, loving couple. So that was very nice to play,” she told The A.V. Club in 2020. “I don’t think they were going that strongly in this direction, but there were a few nagging jokes at the beginning, and we all worked against that, which was great. Because I think it was lovely having a solid relationship in the middle of all this madness and turmoil.”

O’Hara performed several other roles throughout 21st century, voicing characters in Where The Wild Things Are, Frankenweenie, and The Wild Robot, while appearing in the hit legacy sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. She also had standout guest-star roles on Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, 30 Rock, and Modern Family. Last year, O’Hara earned her final Emmy nomination for Supporting Actress for The Studio.

O’Hara is survived by her husband and two children.

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