Emmy-winning actress Catherine O’Hara, who starred in “Schitt’s Creek” and “Home Alone,” has died on the age of 71, her administration company mentioned Friday.
The Canadian-born performer starred in “Beetlejuice” and just lately Apple TV’s Hollywood satire present “The Studio.”
Her supervisor Marc Gurvitz’s workplace confirmed the actress’s demise to AFP, with none additional particulars.
Page Six, citing a hearth division spokesman, reported that O’Hara was rushed to hospital earlier than daybreak from her house within the swanky Brentwood space of Los Angeles.
AFP was not instantly capable of verify that.
O’Hara was born in Toronto in 1954, the place she joined the legendary comedy theater Second City, alongside Eugene Levy, with whom she would collaborate all through her profession, together with on the smash TV sequence “Schitt’s Creek.”
Her break into motion pictures got here in 1980 with “Double Negative” — additionally alongside Levy, and John Candy.
In 1988, she performed Winona Ryder’s stepmother in Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice.” She would later marry the movie’s manufacturing designer Bo Welch. The couple had two sons, Matthew and Luke.
But it was in 1990 that she grew to become extensively identified to a world viewers, because the mom of Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin in “Home Alone.”
“It’s a perfect movie, isn’t it?” she instructed People in 2024.
“You want to be part of something good, and that’s how you go,” she mentioned.
She would reprise the position within the movie’s sequel — “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” which featured a cameo from Donald Trump, many years earlier than he would turn into U.S. president.
In 1993 she collaborated once more with Burton on “The Nightmare before Christmas.”
The versatile comedienne additionally appeared in British filmmaker Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries that experience foolish spectacles of Americana, like zany canine handlers in “Best in Show,” useless folks 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 press release.
But she is probably finest identified by fashionable audiences for her position 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 instructed People, in reference to her well-known 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 position introduced her an Emmy for finest lead actress in 2020. She was additionally awarded a Golden Globe and a SAG Award.
As news of her demise unfold on Friday, fellow performers and different luminaries had been fast to react.
“Mama. I thought we had time,” Culkin wrote on Instagram, alongside an image 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 mentioned he and different Canadians had been mourning O’Hara’s demise.
“Over 5 decades of work, Catherine earned her place in the canon of Canadian comedy,” he wrote on X, previously 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.”
© 2026 AFP