Feb. 4, 2026 | Jaylin Emond-Hardin | Entertainment Editor
It was announced Friday, Jan. 30, that actor Catherine O’Hara passed away at age 71, “following a brief illness.” Currently, there is no other information surrounding the actor’s death.
Best known for her roles as Kevin McCallister’s mother in two “Home Alone” films and as Moira Rose in “Schitt’s Creek” — a role for which she won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and two SAG Awards — O’Hara was known as one of the greats of comedy.
O’Hara’s first appearance was in the 1970s on “SCTV” — short for “Second City Television” — and saw her working with the likes of Martin Short, Joe Flaherty and Eugene Levy. Levy and O’Hara would later collaborate on multiple projects, including “Schitt’s Creek.”
In her early days in Hollywood, casting directors didn’t always know what to do with O’Hara’s “scattershot style,” with the actor often playing eccentric side-characters. In 1984, she played Gail in Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” and in 1988 played Delia Deetz in Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice,” which she reprised in the 2024 sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
Roles were rare following the success of the “Home Alone” films, though O’Hara collaborated with Levy on a series of mockumentaries directed by Christopher Guest — best known for “The Princess Bride” and “Night at the Museum.”
“I am devastated,” Guest said in a statement to the AP. “We have lost one of the comic giants of our age.”
Macaulay Culkin also paid tribute to O’Hara’s passing in an Instagram post shared Friday morning.
“Mama, I thought we had time,” he said, sharing a still from “Home Alone,” alongside a recent recreation of the still. “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.”
O’Hara is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, sons Matthew and Luke, and siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O‘Hara, Tom O’Hara and Patricia Wallice.
Contact the author at howlentertainment@wou.edu
