“Schitt’s Creek” star Catherine O’Hara has died. She was 71.
“Prolific multi-award-winning actress, writer, and comedian Catherine O’Hara died today at her home in Los Angeles following a brief illness,” her agency, Creative Artists Agency, confirmed in a statement to Page Six Friday.
The Los Angeles Fire Department told us exclusively that they responded to a call to the beloved comedian’s home at 4:48 a.m. local time before transporting her to the hospital in “serious” condition.
TMZ was the first to report the news. O’Hara’s cause of death has yet to be revealed, but she suffered from a rare condition called dextrocardia with situs inversus. It’s a rare birth defect in which the organs in the chest and abdomen are positioned as a mirror image of normal anatomy, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
She is survived by her husband of 33 years, Bo Welch, and their two sons, Matthew, 31, and Luke, 29.
Born in 1954 in Toronto, Canada, O’Hara was one of seven children.
After graduating high school in 1973, O’Hara began working as a waitress at the legendary Second City improv comedy hub in Toronto before landing a spot as Gilda Radner’s understudy.
She went on to become a main cast member the following year when Radner left for “Saturday Night Live.”
“Once I saw the Second City show, I thought, ‘Oh my Lord, that is what I want to do. This is what I am meant to do. Please let me in,’” O’Hara told Playback in 2008. “Waitressing seemed like a fun way to watch the show for free every night.”
O’Hara later served as a founding cast member of “Second City Television” in 1976 alongside fellow Canadian comedians and future stars Eugene Levy, John Candy, Martin Short and Rick Moranis.
She became a star of the sketch comedy show for her ability to play both comedic and dramatic characters, and “SCTV” marked the first of what would become O’Hara’s many collaborations with Levy across the next 50 years.
“A lot of people come up to me to talk about ‘SCTV’ — it is really amazing how long that show has lived on,” she said in 2008. “There have always been amazingly funny people in Canada, and we were just one group.”
“‘SCTV’ might have strengthened the idea that your work can go farther than the city or the country you live in, and made it seem more accessible,” she added at the time.
During a period when “SCTV” was in between network deals in 1981, O’Hara was hired to join the cast of “SNL.” However, she quit the Lorne Michaels-created sketch comedy after only a few days without ever appearing on air.
O’Hara ultimately returned to “SCTV” when it was picked up by NBC and rebranded as “SCTV Network 90.”
“Basically, I said, ‘Oh, sorry, I gotta go be with my (comedy) family,’” she told People in 2024 while reflecting on her abrupt “SNL” exit. “Yeah, not cool to take a job and leave it. You know what I mean? It all worked out the way it was supposed to.”
O’Hara’s work as a writer on “SCTV” earned her her first-ever Emmy Award in 1982. Thirty-eight years later, she would go on to win her second and final competitive Emmy for her role as Moira Rose in “Schitt’s Creek.”
Although O’Hara ultimately left “SCTV” ahead of its fifth season in 1982, she returned for occasional guest appearances until the show’s cancellation in 1984.
O’Hara also led an impressive and successful film career.
She made her feature debut in the 1980 flick “Double Negative” alongside “SCTV” co-stars Candy, Levy and Joe Flaherty.
Then, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, she appeared in a handful of supporting roles, including Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” in 1985 and Mike Nichols’ “Heartburn” a year later.
However, it wasn’t until 1988 that O’Hara took the big screen by storm as Delia Deetz in Tim Burton’s gothic horror comedy “Beetlejuice” alongside Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis and Winona Ryder. (The late comedian and actress reprised her role as Delia once more for the classic horror comedy’s sequel, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” with Burton, Keaton, Ryder and Jenna Ortega in 2024.)
O’Hara then starred as Kate McCallister, the mom of Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister, in the blockbuster 1990 Christmas comedy film “Home Alone” and its 1992 sequel “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”
“Mama. I thought we had time. I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you,” Culkin, 45, wrote on Instagram following the news of O’Hara’s sudden passing.
“But I had so much more to say,” he added. “I love you. I’ll see you later.”
O’Hara also showed off her voice acting chops beginning in 1978 with the CBC and NBC TV special “Witch’s Night Out,” in which she voiced the character Malicious.
She reunited with Burton for “The Nightmare Before Christmas” in 1993, where she voiced both Sally and Shock opposite Chris Sarandon’s Jack Skellington.
“I like voicing characters for films and television,” O’Hara told Live for Films in 2018. “It’s challenging but fun.”
O’Hara’s other voice acting work included “Chicken Little,” “Over the Hedge,” Burton’s “Frankenweenie” in 2012, “Elemental” in 2023 and more.
Her final voice acting role, as Pinktail in the Oscar-nominated animated flick “The Wild Robot,” was in 2025.
But a few years after the second “Home Alone” in 1992, O’Hara earned roles in four of Christopher Guest’s celebrated mockumentary films: “Waiting for Guffman” (1996), “Best in Show” (2000), “A Mighty Wind” (2003) and “For Your Consideration” (2006).
“Best In Show,” co-written by Guest and Levy, followed five dogs and their owners, trainers and handlers as they traveled to Philadelphia to compete in the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show.
O’Hara and Levy starred in the Golden Globe-nominated film as Cookie and Gerry Fleck, a middle-class couple from Florida who travel to the prestigious dog show with their beloved Norwich Terrier, Winky.
“I think a lot of it is very fortunate circumstance, in a way, that we happen to end up teamed together,” Levy, 79, told the Hollywood Reporter in 2015 regarding his and O’Hara’s many collaborations. “Certainly in the movies that I did with Chris, Catherine was the name that we both brought up.”
“In this kind of improvisational comedy, there are only so many people who are really quite adept at that, and Catherine is one, and we ended up eyeing her for those early,” he added. “Of course, in ‘Waiting for Guffman’ she was not paired up with me (romantically).”
O’Hara, during that same interview, went on to reference their time filming “Best in Show” together as Cookie and Gerry.
“And in ‘Best in Show,’ you guys had me playing another role (at first), and I said, ‘I don’t know …’ But there was the role of the wife,” she recalled at the time.
“You’ve got a memory! Boy, did that work out!” Levy laughed. “That was one of the funniest couples ever, I think.”
Of course, O’Hara and Levy would end up collaborating once more for “Schitt’s Creek.”
The hit sitcom, which was created by Levy and his son Dan Levy, aired for six seasons on CBS from 2015 to 2020. It followed the wealthy Rose family after they lost their fortune and moved to the titular town somewhere in Canada.
“Schitt’s Creek” set a record for the most wins by a comedy in a single year when the show scored nine Emmys at the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards in 2020.
Some of the categories it won for included outstanding comedy series, outstanding lead actor in a comedy series for Levy (Johnny Rose) and outstanding lead actress in a comedy series for O’Hara (Moira Rose).
Dan Levy (David Rose) and Annie Murphy (Alexis Rose) also won for best supporting actor and best supporting actress in a comedy series, respectively.
“Thank you members of the Television Academy for nominating me alongside these very cool women,” O’Hara began her acceptance speech after winning her second Emmy. “I will forever be grateful to Eugene and Daniel Levy for the opportunity to play a woman of a certain age, my age, who gets to fully be herself.”
“May I please wish you all a sound mind and a sound body, and though these are the strangest of days, may you have as much joy being holed up in a room with your family,” she added.
But Levy wasn’t the only “SCTV” co-star with whom O’Hara developed a lasting collaborative relationship in the years following the Canadian sketch comedy’s cancellation; she also kept in close contact with Candy.
O’Hara and her fellow comedy icon starred in “Double Negative,” as well as the 1985 TV film “The Last Polka” and “Home Alone.”
Candy made a memorable cameo in “Home Alone” as Gus Polinski, the “Polka King of the Midwest,” who helps O’Hara’s Kate McCallister get home to her son.
O’Hara and Candy were so close that she was chosen to give the comedy legend’s eulogy after he died of a heart attack at the age of 43 in March 1994.
“His movies are a safe haven for those of us who get overwhelmed by the sadness and troubles of this world,” she said through tears. “As if he knew he’d be leaving us soon, John left us a library of fun to remember him by.”
“I will miss him,” O’Hara concluded her touching remarks. “But I hope and pray to leave this world too some day and to have a place near God – as near as any other soul, with the exception of John Candy.”
One of O’Hara’s final big-screen projects before her death was the 2025 documentary about Candy’s life titled “John Candy: I Like Me.”
Directed by Colin Hanks, the project included interviews with O’Hara, Levy, and many of their fellow “SCTV” alums.
Some of O’Hara’s other final projects included the 2024 films “Argylle,” “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” and “The Wild Robot.”
As for TV, she ended her more than 50-year comedy and acting career starring in the Apple TV and Emmy-winning hit “The Studio” with Seth Rogen, as well as the HBO series “The Last of Us” with Pedro Pascal.
“It’s a beautiful gift to be able to laugh,” O’Hara told USA Today one year before her death, “and especially to laugh at yourself.”
