Catherine O’Hara, a two-time Emmy winner whose career spanned multiple decades of beloved classics, has died, per a report from TMZ.
The Home Alone and The Studio actress died Friday, according to the publication’s initial reporting. She was 71. Deadline reported shortly after that it had confirmed the actress and comedian’s death, adding that she died at home in Los Angeles “following a brief illness.” Additional details were not immediately shared.
A Second City alum, O’Hara, also a Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards winner, was a fixture on screens big and small throughout her extensive run of beloved titles. In Tim Burton’s 1988 classic Beetlejuice, she played Delia Deetz, a role she returned to in 2024 with its Jenna Ortega-led sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
She kicked off the 1990s with her unforgettable turn as Kate McCallister, mother to Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin, in the John Hughes-written holiday gem Home Alone.
Two years later, Kate and Kevin and the rest of the McCallister crew returned for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Both of the original Home Alone films, particularly the first, stand as examples of a true rarity in film, not to mention in pop culture at large, due to their sustaining popularity across generations of fans.
But to only mention Beetlejuice, Home Alone, and The Studio would be to barely scratch the surface of O’Hara’s catalog.
The Toronto-born star was the voice of Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas, another permanent staple of American pop culture that continues to inspire filmmakers and artists of all disciplines to this day.
She was also enlisted by director Christopher Guest for four mockumentary comedies—Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration—that are widely regarded as classics of the genre.
O’Hara’s seemingly inevitable ascent began with her lengthy run on Canada’s Second City Television, which featured prominently in the recent John Candy documentary I Like Me.
Thanks to her performance as Moira Rose on the sitcom Schitt’s Creek, O’Hara took home an Emmy win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and a Golden Globe for Best Actress - Television Series Musical or Comedy.
Last year, she added two more Emmy nominations to her lengthy roster of accolades thanks to her main role in Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s acclaimed industry comedy The Studio, and her guest-starring turn in HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation.
In a 2024 interview with Today, O’Hara, the sixth of seven children, recalled her parents being “really funny,” adding that comedy was an expectation in a family that size.
“It was demanded more than encouraged in our home,” she said at the time. “When you have that many people at the table, you’d better have something at least funny to say, if not interesting.”
RIP.