Catherine O’Hara: gloriously, brilliantly herself

“Kevin!”

It takes one word to bring back the panic of a mother realising she has left her son at home. Generations of viewers owe that moment to Catherine O’Hara. What a face, what a presence, what a comic talent. Born in Toronto, she credited her gift for self-mockery to a particularly Canadian sense of humour. Whatever the source, her originality was unmistakable, not least in those wonderfully unpredictable blue eyes. O’Hara died aged 71, leaving performances in Home Alone, Beetlejuice and, as Sally’s voice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, alongside television work including Schitt’s Creek, The Last of Us and The Studio.

Her characters could be eccentric, vain and mischievous, yet always vulnerable. She emerged from Toronto’s improvisational comedy scene in the 1970s and worked with Eugene Levy on the sketch show SCTV, beginning a collaboration that lasted decades. They would later star together in Schitt’s Creek, the 2015–2020 series created by Eugene and Dan Levy, which brought O’Hara another extraordinary career high.

It was one of the shows that helped get us through the pandemic.

Moira Rose, the extravagantly dressed former soap star adjusting to the loss of the family fortune, entered comedy history with an accent nobody could quite place and lines nobody could forget. Dreaming of her old grandeur, she threw herself into questionable projects, from The Crows Have Eyes 3 to an advert for dreadful fruit wine. As Moira became steadily more intoxicated, the vintner’s name became steadily less pronounceable. The character was a magnificent piece of comic invention, built with the improvisational fearlessness that made O’Hara so singular.

In 2025, she brought that talent to Seth Rogen’s The Studio, playing former studio head Patty Leigh. The role added another sharp, memorable woman to an already remarkable gallery of characters, alongside further awards recognition.

Her advice, in essence: when in doubt, play someone a little unhinged.

Then you don’t have to justify everything that comes out of your mouth. Across her career, O’Hara demonstrated just how well that approach could work. The screen’s glorious oddball found her own place in Hollywood and made herself an icon.

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