We’re ending this week with some sad news, and this one seemed to come out of nowhere. Many of us were just watching Catherine O’Hara on our screens in the last couple months, watching her interview in the John Candy documentary John Candy: I Like Me and, of course, sharing the screen with Macaulay Culkin in the Christmas classics Home Alone and Home Alone 2… But now, TMZ has broken the news that O’Hara has passed away at the age of 71.
A Legend
Born on March 4, 1954 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, O’Hara started pursuing a career in the entertainment industry at a young age, joining the improv comedy group The Second City in 1974. When they launched the sketch comedy TV series SCTV, she was a regular performer on the show. She almost moved over to Saturday Night Live when SCTV was between network deals, but when SCTV secured a new deal, O’Hara left Saturday Night Live behind without ever appearing on it as a cast member. (She did make it onto SNL later in her career; first with a filmed cameo, then twice as a host.) She cut back on her SCTV appearances soon after, but earned an Emmy for her writing on the show before it finished its run.
She went on to build an incredible acting career outside of the comedy troupe, racking up well over one hundred screen acting credits and working on the likes of After Hours, Heartburn, Beetlejuice, Dick Tracy, Tales from the Crypt, Dream On, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Paper, Wyatt Earp, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, Orange County, A Mighty Wind, Surviving Christmas, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Six Feet Under, Monster House, Over the Hedge, For Your Consideration, Away We Go, Where the Wild Things Are, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Frankenweenie, 30 Rock, Modern Family, The Addams Family, The Kids in the Hall, Elemental, Pain Hustlers, Argylle, the aforementioned Home Alone movies, and a whole lot more.
36 years after working on Beetlejuice, she reprised her role in the recent sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. She also starred in the TV series Schitt’s Creek for 6 seasons and 80 episodes. Her most recent credits came on a few episodes of the HBO series The Last of Us and the Apple TV+ series The Studio. Those two shows were airing at the same time last year.
O’Hara’s cause of death hasn’t been reported yet, and this news came as a major shock to me. She was still working steadily and seemed to be doing fine… and it felt like she was sort of a “movie mom” to me, since I watched Beetlejuice and the Home Alone movies a lot when I was very young. I’m very sad to learn that she’s no longer with us.
O’Hara met production designer Bo Welch on the set of Beetlejuice and they got married in 1992. They have two sons, Matthew and Luke. She is survived by her husband and sons, as well as her sister, singer/songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara.
Our sincere condolences go out to Catherine O’Hara’s family, friends, and fans.
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