Catherine O’Hara, 1954–2026
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
It is a testament to the hilarious strangeness of actress and comedian Catherine O’Hara that she could plausibly portray a suburban mother who, upon embarking on a transcontinental trip, neglects to bring her young son along with the rest of the family.
In the 1990 John Hughes-scripted megahit Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin was the featured attraction as the child who fails to join his family on vacation and causes a ruckus on the homestead. At the time, Culkin garnered all the attention, but it was O’Hara who gave the movie much of its humor and all of its heart. By then a well-known comic performer, O’Hara was so believably off-kilter, so plausibly distracted, that the moviegoing public could imagine her neglecting to pack her rambunctious, obnoxious son along with the rest of her possessions. We forgive O’Hara for her lapse in parental oversight in a way we might not a more grounded, naturally maternal actress. A degree of delirium was part of the O’Hara signature.
O’Hara, who died on Jan. 30 at age 71, enlivened numerous films and TV shows through her distinctive sense of humor. She seemed unique among her contemporaries in her capacity to authentically channel the weirder sides of human nature. It is difficult to imagine another actress who could bring gravitas to both the part of an ice cream truck proprietress with vigilante instincts in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) and that of a supercilious urbanite sculptress in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988). Is it any wonder she could not be trusted to keep Culkin from being left home alone?
Catherine O’Hara in 2024. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Like Bill Murray, O’Hara offered convincing evidence that to spring from a large family may be a recipe for future comic greatness. Born in Toronto, O’Hara was one of a septet of children, and she was the only one who made comedy her life’s work. Sizing up the opportunities in her home country, she charted a course to the Toronto offshoot of Second City. The comedy troupe soon publicized her antics to the wider public by hiring her to appear on its television iteration, the legendary SCTV, on which she induced laughter from the mid-1970s through the early 80s.
Around that time, Hollywood started to seize on her manifold talents. Following a handful of undistinguished Canadian productions, Scorsese cast her in his first real comedy, After Hours, in which Griffin Dunne stars as a mundane worker bee plucked from his natural habitat and dumped into 80s-era …
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
It is a testament to the hilarious strangeness of actress and comedian Catherine O’Hara that she could plausibly portray a suburban mother who, upon embarking on a transcontinental trip, neglects to bring her young son along with the rest of the family.
In the 1990 John Hughes-scripted megahit Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin was the featured attraction as the child who fails to join his family on vacation and causes a ruckus on the homestead. At the time, Culkin garnered all the attention, but it was O’Hara who gave the movie much of its humor and all of its heart. By then a well-known comic performer, O’Hara was so believably off-kilter, so plausibly distracted, that the moviegoing public could imagine her neglecting to pack her rambunctious, obnoxious son along with the rest of her possessions. We forgive O’Hara for her lapse in parental oversight in a way we might not a more grounded, naturally maternal actress. A degree of delirium was part of the O’Hara signature.
O’Hara, who died on Jan. 30 at age 71, enlivened numerous films and TV shows through her distinctive sense of humor. She seemed unique among her contemporaries in her capacity to authentically channel the weirder sides of human nature. It is difficult to imagine another actress who could bring gravitas to both the part of an ice cream truck proprietress with vigilante instincts in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) and that of a supercilious urbanite sculptress in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988). Is it any wonder she could not be trusted to keep Culkin from being left home alone?
Catherine O’Hara in 2024. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Like Bill Murray, O’Hara offered convincing evidence that to spring from a large family may be a recipe for future comic greatness. Born in Toronto, O’Hara was one of a septet of children, and she was the only one who made comedy her life’s work. Sizing up the opportunities in her home country, she charted a course to the Toronto offshoot of Second City. The comedy troupe soon publicized her antics to the wider public by hiring her to appear on its television iteration, the legendary SCTV, on which she induced laughter from the mid-1970s through the early 80s.
Around that time, Hollywood started to seize on her manifold talents. Following a handful of undistinguished Canadian productions, Scorsese cast her in his first real comedy, After Hours, in which Griffin Dunne stars as a mundane worker bee plucked from his natural habitat and dumped into 80s-era …
Catherine O’Hara, 1954–2026
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
It is a testament to the hilarious strangeness of actress and comedian Catherine O’Hara that she could plausibly portray a suburban mother who, upon embarking on a transcontinental trip, neglects to bring her young son along with the rest of the family.
In the 1990 John Hughes-scripted megahit Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin was the featured attraction as the child who fails to join his family on vacation and causes a ruckus on the homestead. At the time, Culkin garnered all the attention, but it was O’Hara who gave the movie much of its humor and all of its heart. By then a well-known comic performer, O’Hara was so believably off-kilter, so plausibly distracted, that the moviegoing public could imagine her neglecting to pack her rambunctious, obnoxious son along with the rest of her possessions. We forgive O’Hara for her lapse in parental oversight in a way we might not a more grounded, naturally maternal actress. A degree of delirium was part of the O’Hara signature.
O’Hara, who died on Jan. 30 at age 71, enlivened numerous films and TV shows through her distinctive sense of humor. She seemed unique among her contemporaries in her capacity to authentically channel the weirder sides of human nature. It is difficult to imagine another actress who could bring gravitas to both the part of an ice cream truck proprietress with vigilante instincts in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) and that of a supercilious urbanite sculptress in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988). Is it any wonder she could not be trusted to keep Culkin from being left home alone?
Catherine O’Hara in 2024. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Like Bill Murray, O’Hara offered convincing evidence that to spring from a large family may be a recipe for future comic greatness. Born in Toronto, O’Hara was one of a septet of children, and she was the only one who made comedy her life’s work. Sizing up the opportunities in her home country, she charted a course to the Toronto offshoot of Second City. The comedy troupe soon publicized her antics to the wider public by hiring her to appear on its television iteration, the legendary SCTV, on which she induced laughter from the mid-1970s through the early 80s.
Around that time, Hollywood started to seize on her manifold talents. Following a handful of undistinguished Canadian productions, Scorsese cast her in his first real comedy, After Hours, in which Griffin Dunne stars as a mundane worker bee plucked from his natural habitat and dumped into 80s-era …
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