Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – Emmy-winning actress Catherine O’Hara, who starred in “Schitt’s Creek” and “Home Alone,” has died at the age of 71, her management agency said Friday. The Canadian-born performer starred in “Beetlejuice” and recently in Apple TV’s Hollywood satire show “The Studio.” Her manager Marc Gurvitz’s office confirmed the actress’s death to AFP, without any further details.
Page Six, citing a fire department spokesman, reported that O’Hara was rushed to hospital before dawn from her home in the swanky Brentwood area of Los Angeles. AFP was not immediately able to confirm that. O’Hara was born in Toronto in 1954, where she joined the legendary comedy theater Second City, alongside Eugene Levy, with whom she would collaborate throughout her career, including on the smash TV series “Schitt’s Creek.”
Her break into movies came in 1980 with “Double Negative” — also alongside Levy and John Candy. In 1988, she played Winona Ryder’s stepmother in Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice.” She would later marry the film’s production designer Bo Welch. The couple had two sons, Matthew and Luke. But it was in 1990 that she became widely known to a global audience, as the mother of Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin in “Home Alone.”
“It’s a perfect movie, isn’t it?” she told People in 2024. “You want to be part of something good, and that’s how you go,” she said. She would reprise the role in the film’s sequel — “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” which featured a cameo from Donald Trump, decades before he would become US president. In 1993, she collaborated again with Burton on “The Nightmare before Christmas.”
The versatile comedienne also appeared in British filmmaker Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries that revel in silly spectacles of Americana, like zany dog handlers in “Best in Show,” vain folk singers in “A Mighty Wind,” and award-hungry actors in “For Your Consideration.” “I am devastated. We have lost one of the comic giants of our age,” Guest wrote in a statement.
But she is perhaps best known by modern audiences for her role in “Schitt’s Creek,” created by Eugene Levy’s son, Dan Levy. “I used to mostly get people named Kevin who’d come up to me and ask me to yell ‘Kevin!’ in their faces,” O’Hara told People, in reference to her famous line in “Home Alone.” “Now it’s mostly about (her character) Moira and ‘Schitt’s Creek.’ I’ve never gotten this kind of attention in my life. It’s crazy.” The role brought her an Emmy for best lead actress in 2020. She was also awarded a Golden Globe and a SAG Award.
As news of her death spread on Friday, fellow performers and other luminaries were quick to react. “Mama. I thought we had time,” Culkin wrote on Instagram, alongside a picture of the pair of them in “Home Alone.” “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.”
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said he and other Canadians were mourning O’Hara’s death. “Over 5 decades of work, Catherine earned her place in the canon of Canadian comedy,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Canada has lost a legend. My thoughts are with her family, friends, and all those who loved her work on screen. She will be dearly missed.”
© 2024 AFP
