LOS ANGELES — Catherine O’Hara, the Emmy-winning Canadian-born actor whose range stretched from the anarchic brilliance of SCTV to the beloved roles of Home Alone and Schitt’s Creek, died at her Los Angeles home following a brief illness. She was 71.
Her death was confirmed by her agency, CAA, which said further details were not immediately available.
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O’Hara’s death prompted a wave of tributes across the industry, led by Macaulay Culkin, who played Kevin McCallister opposite O’Hara’s anxious, fiercely devoted mother, Kate, in the 1990 holiday classic Home Alone and its 1992 sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
“Mama. I thought we had time. 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. I’ll see you later,” Culkin wrote on Instagram.
O’Hara’s career was launched in the 1970s at Toronto’s Second City Theatre, a spawning ground for generations of comic talent. She was among the creators of SCTV, the sketch-comedy institution that helped define North American television humor and cemented her as a fearless character actor with impeccable timing. At Second City, she first worked with Eugene Levy, beginning a decades-long collaboration that would culminate in the cultural phenomenon Schitt’s Creek.
That reversal-of-fortunes comedy followed the once-wealthy Rose family forced to relocate to the rural town of Schitt’s Creek — a property they had once purchased as a joke — after losing everything. O’Hara’s portrayal of Moira Rose, the ever-theatrical, once-famous matriarch clinging to her eccentric wardrobe and grand vocabulary, became a signature performance. Daniel and Eugene Levy starred as David and Johnny Rose, while Annie Murphy played Alexis Rose, completing a family dynamic that anchored the series’ humor and heart.
O’Hara’s work resonated beyond comedy. Her dramatic turn in HBO’s The Last of Us earned her an Emmy nomination, expanding a résumé already stacked with acclaim. She earned another nomination for her recent role as a Hollywood producer in the award-winning series The Studio, underlining her versatility and staying power across formats and generations.
Across decades on screens large and small, O’Hara built a gallery of characters that were at once outsize and deeply relatable — whether deploying maternal panic and resourcefulness in Home Alone or sculpting Moira Rose’s singular cadence into a cultural touchstone. Colleagues and fans praised her for a career that balanced audacious risk with precise craft, and for performances that made even the most absurd premises feel human.
O’Hara is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, and sons Matthew and Luke.
Details on memorial arrangements were not immediately announced.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
