“If you let go, everything feeds you”: Catherine O’Hara, 1954–2026

In 2007, professional atheist and contrarian Christopher Hitchens penned an editorial for Vanity Fair called “Why Women Aren’t Funny.”¹ 2007 probably seems like a very long time ago for some of our readers, and well, it’s almost twenty years ago, so it is, but I want to note that by that time Catherine O’Hara had been making people laugh themselves sick for more than twenty years. (The quote that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backward and in high heels comes to mind.)

A veteran of SCTV with four Christopher Guest mockumentaries, O’Hara starred in several mainstream hits (mostnotably Home Alone and Beetlejuice), had animation credits from The Nightmare Before Christmas through The Wild Robot, and was a familiar face on television: guest appearances on comedy shows and late night, and a later-in-life comeback with acclaimed roles in Schitt’s Creek and The Studio.

Like many funny kids, O’Hara was part of a large family (the sixth of seven children); one of her brothers dated Gilda Radner, and she credits that with sparking her interest in comedy. She became Radner’s understudy for the Second City comedy troupe in Toronto in 1974, and became part of the cast of SCTV two years later. She was briefly cast on Saturday Night Live when SCTV was in contract limbo, but never actually went on the air in New York until years later.² She also began doing voiceover work in the 70s and never really stopped. She married production designer Bo Welch on the set of Beetlejuice and married him in 1992; they have two sons. She wasn’t afraid of the limelight, but never really let herself be chewed up by the Hollywood machine.

She threw herself into roles with no shame or self-consciousness, something that served her well in the era of social media. There are approximately one million gifsets and tributes to O’Hara’s character Moira Rose, from Tumblr to the official Merriam-Webster social media account. 

No one could chew on a line like Catherine O’Hara, and she never acted above the material. Here she is in a music video from, of all things, Argylle:

But O’Hara was more than crackerjack comic timing and a wicked sense of humor (though those would have been more than enough). Like many great comedians, she could land the serious moments as well. The harried mother in Home Alone could easily have been a caricature or a monster: who gets all the way the airport, much less France, without remembering their son? But O’Hara makes her believably stressed before Kevin is left behind, and her guilt, heartbreak and anxiety for her boy is undeniable. We’re cheering her on as she takes that bus with John Candy.³

It feels a little appropriate and also a little heartbreaking that O’Hara died in the midst of a frenzy over another Canadian import gone international. Heated Rivalry is a very different show, but like Schitt’s Creek and SCTV, it wears its national pride on its sleeve (and there’s a certain low-budget homegrown charm to them all). She was a Canadian legend, and we were all lucky to have her.

Our own E. Rose Nelson paid tribute to O’Hara just last September with Celebrating the Living. I’m glad we celebrated her while we had her, but I wanted to say goodbye, too.

The headline quote is from this excellent interview/profile in Elle.

1. I’m not linking to that garbage and you can’t make me. ↩︎
2. In 1988, when Matthew Broderick hosted. ↩︎
3. She and Culkin seemed to have had a good relationship, which is nice, especially considering his experience with Hollywood could be rough. ↩︎