Catherine O’Hara, a gifted comedic actress and two-time Emmy winner, has died.
O’Hara died Friday at her home in Los Angeles after a brief illness, her reps at CAA confirmed. She was 71.
A native of Toronto, O’Hara was part of the SCTV ensemble that also helped launch the careers of John Candy, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis and others. She’s arguably best known for playing Kevin’s (Macaulay Culkin) mother, Kate, in the Home Alone movies and had a career renaissance in the past 10 years with Schitt’s Creek — winning an Emmy for her role as a faded soap opera actress opposite old friend Levy — and The Studio, for which she earned an Emmy nomination last year.
She won an Emmy in 2020 for playing Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek. She also earned an Emmy for her work on SCTV Network in 1982 and was nominated eight other times for acting and writing awards. O’Hara was a double nominee in 2025, scoring anod best guest actress in a drama series for HBO’s The Last of Us along with her comedic turn in The Studio.
O’Hara was born March 4, 1954, and grew up in Toronto. She joined the city’s Second City company at age 20, first serving as an understudy to Gilda Radner and moving up to the main cast when Radner left to become part of the original Saturday Night Live ensemble.
In 1976, the troupe launched SCTV, a sketch comedy show that originally aired on Canada’s Global network. The show’s initial cast, all of whom were writers as well, featured a murderer’s row of comic talent in Candy, Joe Flaherty, Levy, Andrea Martin, O’Hara, Harold Ramis and Dave Thomas; Moranis joined later in the show’s run, as did Martin Short. NBC later picked up the show to run in the United States.
O’Hara would go on to play the overbearing Delia Deetz in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (a role she reprised in the 2024 sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) before being cast in 1990’s Home Alone, the now holiday classic where she plays Kate McCallister, a mother who races back from a Paris Christmas trip after realizing the family left their 8-year-old son, Kevin (Culkin), behind. She played Kate once more in the sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
She became part of Christopher Guest’s regular ensemble in the films Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006). O’Hara earned an Emmy nomination for her supporting role in HBO’s 2010 film Temple Grandin.
With Schitt’s Creek, co-created by Eugene Levy and son Dan, O’Hara won a new generation of fans for her role as Moira, who rails at the formerly wealthy Rose family’s diminished circumstances. The show swept the comedy categories at the 2020 Emmys, winning best comedy series and acting honors for O’Hara, Dan Levy, Eugune Levy and Annie Murphy.
The show became a breakout hit in its later seasons on Canada’s CBC, Pop TV in the U.S. and streaming on Netflix, in addition to its awards haul. “There’s so many projects that get a ton of attention right at the beginning, maybe before they’re even quite ready for it, and then it’s kind of downhill attention-wise from there,” O’Hara told The Hollywood Reporter after her 2020 nomination. “We’re so lucky to do the show we wanted and, apparently, leaving people wanting more. I’m happy to be a late bloomer, I always have been in my life and I’m grateful for it.”
What turned out to be O’Hara’s final series role came in The Studio, Apple TV’s Hollywood satire in which she played deposed studio head Patty Leigh, who alternately relishes in and sympathizes with her replacement Matt Remick’s (Seth Rogen) struggles. She had been set to continue her role in the show’s second season, which began filming in mid-January.
O’Hara is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, sons Matthew and Luke, along with siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O‘Hara, Tom O’Hara and Patricia Wallice.
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