One month into 2026 and Hollywood has lost another legend! Catherine O’Hara passed away on Friday, per the Associated Press. She was 71. O’Hara was a gifted comic actor born in Canada. Among her many iconic roles, she starred as the mother in the first two ‘Home Alone’ films. Following news of her death, her co-star Macaulay Culkin, who played her son in the movies, shared a message that has fans crying even harder!
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Catherine O’Hara Died Following An Illness
Catherine O’Hara died at her home in Los Angeles “following a brief illness,” according to a statement from her agency, Creative Artists Agency. There are no further details about said illness at this time. It’s unclear if the actress was alone when she died.
She is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, and sons Matthew and Luke. Additionally, she is survived by six siblings, Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O’Hara, Tom O’Hara and Patricia Wallice.
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Catherine Built A Legacy To Remember
O’Hara’s career was launched at the Second City in Toronto in the in 1970s. It was there that she first worked with Eugene Levy, who would become a lifelong collaborator — and her “Schitt’s Creek” costar. The two would be among the original cast of the sketch show “SCTV,” short for “Second City Television.” The series, which began on Canadian TV in the 1970s and aired on NBC in the U.S. in the early ’80s, spawned a legendary group of esoteric comedians including Martin Short, John Candy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis and Joe Flaherty.Hollywood didn’t entirely know what to do with O’Hara and her scattershot style. She played oddball supporting characters in Martin Scorsese’s 1985 “After Hours” and Tim Burton’s 1988 “Beetlejuice” — a role she would reprise in the 2024 sequel.
She played it mostly straight as a horrified mother who accidentally abandoned her child in the two “Home Alone” movies. The films were among the biggest box office earners of the early 1990s and their Christmas setting made them TV perennials.
O’Hara would find her groove with the crew of improv pros brought together by Christopher Guest for a series of mockumentaries that began with 1996’s “Waiting for Guffman” and continued with 2000’s “Best in Show,” 2003’s “A Might Wind” and 2006’s “For Your Consideration.”
“Schitt’s Creek” would be a career-capping triumph and the perfect personification of her comic talents. The small show created by Levy and his son Dan about a wealthy family forced to live in a tiny town would dominate the Emmys in its sixth and final season. It brought O’Hara, always a beloved figure, a new generation of fans and put her at the center of cultural attention.
She told The Associated Press that she pictured Moira, a former soap opera star, as someone who had married rich and wanted to “remind everyone that (she was) special, too.” With an exaggerated Mid-Atlantic accent and obscure vocabulary, Moira spoke unlike anyone else, using words like “frippet,” “pettifogging” and “unasinous,” to show her desire to be different, O’Hara said. To perfect Moira’s voice, O’Hara would pore through old vocabulary books, “Moira-izing” the dialogue even further than what was already written.The show also brought a career renaissance that led to a dramatic turn on HBO’s “The Last of Us” and a straitlaced role as a Hollywood producer in “The Studio,” both of which earned her Emmy nominations.
AP Entertainment Writers Andrew Dalton, Jocelyn Noveck, Lindsey Bahr and R.J. Rico contributed to this report via AP Newsroom.
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