Tributes have poured in for beloved Canadian actress Catherine O’Hara, the Home Alone and Schitt’s Creek star who died this week at age 71.
US media outlets reported on Friday that O’Hara died at her Los Angeles home after a brief illness.
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Born and raised in Toronto, O’Hara began her acting career in the 1970s at The Second City improvisational theatre and later performed on iconic Canadian comedy show SCTV.
Her break into movies came in 1980 with Double Negative, alongside her longtime collaborator Eugene Levy, as well as John Candy.
But she became widely known to a global audience when she played Macaulay Culkin’s mother in 1990’s Home Alone.
“It’s a perfect movie, isn’t it?” she told People magazine in 2024. “You want to be part of something good, and that’s how you go.”
More recently, younger audiences embraced O’Hara for her role as the matriarch of a rich family that loses its wealth in Schitt’s Creek, where she again starred alongside Levy, as well as his son, Dan.
Her turn as Moira Rose won her an Emmy award for best actress in a comedy series in 2020.
Here’s a look at how actors, politicians and others are remembering O’Hara:
Macaulay Culkin
“Mama. I thought we had time. I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you. But I had so much more to say. I love you. I’ll see you later,” Culkin wrote on Instagram.
Eugene Levy
Levy got his start alongside O’Hara at Second City and on SCTV, and he later starred with her in several projects, including Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and Waiting for Guffman.
In a statement, Levy said “words seem inadequate to express the loss” he felt after her death. “I had the honor of knowing and working with the great Catherine O’Hara for over fifty years,” he said.
“From our beginnings on the Second City stage, to SCTV, to the movies we did with Chris Guest, to our six glorious years on Schitt’s Creek, I cherished our working relationship, but most of all our friendship. And I will miss her.
“My heart goes out to Bo, Matthew, Luke, and the entire O’Hara family.”
Dan Levy
“What a gift to have gotten to dance in the warm glow of Catherine O’Hara’s brilliance for all those years,” Levy, who played O’Hara’s character’s son David Rose on Schitt’s Creek, wrote on Instagram.
“Having spent over fifty years collaborating with my Dad, Catherine was extended family before she ever played my family. It’s hard to imagine a world without her in it. I will cherish every funny memory I was fortunate enough to make with her.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney
“Over 5 decades of work, Catherine earned her place in the canon of Canadian comedy — from SCTV to Schitt’s Creek,” Carney wrote on X.
“Canada has lost a legend. My thoughts are with her family, friends, and all those who loved her work on screen. She will be dearly missed.”
Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
Trudeau hailed O’Hara as “a beloved Canadian icon with a rare gift for comedy and heart”.
“She made people laugh across generations and helped bring Canadian storytelling to the world in a way only she could. My thoughts are with her family, friends, and everyone who found joy in her work,” Trudeau wrote on X.
Seth Rogen
Rogen, who starred alongside O’Hara in the series The Studio, said he told O’Hara when he first met her that he thought “she was the funniest person [he’d] ever had the pleasure of watching on screen”.
“Home Alone was the movie that made me want to make movies. Getting to work with her was a true honour,” Rogen wrote in an Instagram post.
“She was hysterical, kind, intuitive, generous … she made me want to make our show good enough to be worthy of her presence in it. This is just devastating. We’re all lucky we got to live in a world with her in it.”
