Catherine O’Hara, Iconic ‘Home Alone’ and ‘Schitt’s Creek’ Star, Dead at 71

The beloved comic actress from Canada won Emmys for the more recent "Schitt's Creek" and for her role on the sketch series "SCTV" in the 1980s.

Catherine O’Hara — the beloved Canadian comic actress best known for her roles in the films of Christopher Guest, the “Home Alone” movies, “Schitt’s Creek,” and many more — has died. She was 71. The news was confirmed to IndieWire by her agents at CAA. She died at her home in Los Angeles on January 30, 2026 after a brief illness.

O’Hara is survived by her husband Bo Welch and sons Matthew and Luke. The acclaimed actress was born in Toronto but died in Los Angeles, where she had lived throughout the last few decades of her career.

O’Hara was most recently seen on the big screen reprising the role of Delia Deetz in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the sequel to Tim Burton’s 1988 “Beetlejuice.” She also starred in Season 2 of HBO’s “The Last of Us” as a hard-drinking therapist to survivors of a zombie apocalypse and in Season 1 of “The Studio” as exiled Hollywood executive Patty Leigh.

But she’s perhaps best known for her roles in Christopher Guest films like “A Mighty Wind” and “Best in Show,” and, of course, the “Home Alone” movies, where she played the frazzled mother to Macaulay Culkin’s perennially missing Kevin McAllister.

She earned Emmy nominations for “The Last of Us” and “The Studio” and won a primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as hilariously deluded, struggling actress Moira Rose in the Canadian show “Schitt’s Creek.” Other credits include a laugh-out-loud funny stint on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” as Bam Bam, plus Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” Mike Nichols’ “Heartburn,” Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” Sam Mendes’ “Away We Go,” the animated favorite “Nightmare Before Christmas,” and more.

O’Hara collaborated with Christopher Guest and co-writer Eugene Levy four times on the critically acclaimed mockumentary films “Waiting for Guffman,” “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind,” and “For Your Consideration.” Her performance in the latter won her the 2007 National Board of Review Award for Supporting Actress.

Catherine O’Hara launched her career as a star of “Second City Television,” aka “SCTV,” the Canadian sketch show that also featured Eugene Levy, John Candy, Rick Moranis, and more familiar faces in comedy. Her breakout screen role was as an ice-cream truck driver in Scorsese’s “After Hours,” which led to roles like in “Beetlejuice” as the pretentious sculpture-art collector Delia, or in Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracy,” or of course, the “Home Alone” movies. She starred in the 1990 original and in 1992’s “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” as a mother who became the heart of the story, stressing about her son Kevin’s whereabouts, but funny on her own terms.

Her roles in Guest’s films announced her as a big-screen comedic talent to watch, whether in “Best in Show” as middle-class Floridian Mayflower kennel club entrant Cookie Fleck (“this tastes like cafeteria hot-plate food”) or in “For Your Consideration” as Academy Award-bidding actress Marilyn Heck, who doesn’t receive a nomination (“I wasn’t nominated! I’m not gonna lose!”). She’s also side-splittingly hilarious as Bam Bam in Season 7 of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” as the mentally disabled sister to Marty Funkhouse (played by late actor Bob Einstein). A role that perhaps would not be assigned today.

Looking back, she was also outrageously funny in Jake Kasdan’s 2002 middling comedy “Orange County”; she could elevate any material. In that film, she played another stressed-out mother, here to Colin Hanks, who is heading off to college while she’s stuck at home in an unfulfilling second marriage. Her panic at Hanks’ character beginning to flee the nest is pure comic genius.

Her turn as outré onscreen diva Moira Rose in Eugene and Dan Levy’s Canadian sitcom “Schitt’s Creek” turned her into a star for a new generation. In that show, which won her a best actress Emmy, she perfectly embodies a too-into-herself failed actress scrambling for a new role, and often decked out in ridiculously over-the-top fashion.

Along with Emmys for “Schitt’s Creek” and “SCTV,” she also won a Golden Globe (for “Schitt’s Creek” in 2020) and two SAG Awards (for the same show). It’s hard to think of a more beloved comic screen actress who was still working today. She was nominated for a New York Film Critics Circle Award for her role in “For Your Consideration” — she didn’t win it.

Much like her character in Christopher Guest’s film, she couldn’t lose.

Brian Welk contributed reporting.