According to TMZ, which obtained her death certificate on Monday, Catherine O’Hara’s cause of death was a pulmonary embolism, and her underlying condition was rectal cancer.
She passed away on Friday, January 30th at her home in Los Angeles after being hospitalized early in the morning due to illness. According to Page Six, paramedics were called to her home at 4:48 a.m. that morning. O’Hara’s agency CAA said in a statement that O’Hara passed away after a “short illness.”
Her career spans more than 50 years and began on the Canadian sketch show Second City Television, where she won her first Emmy Award for Best Writing. She went on to star in Tim Burton’s classic horror film Beetlejuice in 1988 as Delia Dietz, stepmother to Winona Ryder’s character Lydia. She reprized the role in Burton’s 2024 sequel Beetlejuice. O’Hara rose to fame co-starring Macaulay Culkin in two films, Home Alone, in which she played Kate McCallister, another famous mother. She and Culkin, who played her son Kevin, have remained close throughout their lives, and she honored him at the 2023 Walk of Fame ceremony.
“Mom, I thought there was still time,” Culkin wrote on social media. “I wanted more. I wanted to sit in the chair next to you. I heard your voice, but there was so much more I wanted to say. I love you. See you soon.”
O’Hara reunited with Burton in the animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas, where she voiced Sally, a singing rag doll who falls in love with Jack Skellington, and co-starred in Frankenweenie. She had a belated career revival thanks to Schitt’s Creek, where she played Moira Rose, a rich-to-rags housewife alongside Dan Levy, Eugene Levy, and Annie Murphy. She won an Emmy Award for this role in 2020 and received two other nominations. O’Hara also appeared in The Last of Us and The Studio, and was nominated for two Emmy Awards in 2025.
