The Canadian actress Catherine O’Hara, the comedy icon known for roles in films like Schitt’s Creek, Home Alone, and Christopher Guest mockumentaries like Best in Show, died at age 71.
The Canadian diva rose to stardom through Toronto’s Second City improvisation team and on SCTV before making a name for herself in the US in 1988’s Beetlejuice and as the matriarch in the holiday classic Home Alone. Actress Catherine O’Hara was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital in “serious” condition, where she later died. According to her agency, CAA, O’Hara died Friday at her home in Los Angeles following a brief illness.
However, O’Hara suffered from situs inversus—an extremely rare condition in which all of an individual’s organs appear on the opposite side of their body from the regular population. Her liver, for example, appeared on her left and her heart on the right. The disorder is normally innocuous but can make future issues more difficult to diagnose because symptoms might look different in persons with mirrored organs.
BeetleJuice (1988) as Delia Deetz for Tim Burton was her first major hit, and this hit made her legendary. After that, she never looked down again in her acting career and has done Burton’s 2024 sequel of BeetleJuice as well as included her exceptional voice in Burton’s 1993 success “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
In spite of Beetlejuice Her most renowned acting role is in the Home Alone series, as Kate McCallister in Chris Columbus’s 1990 hit film. She played the role of the mother of the main lead character, Kevin. Her fans have also seen her in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”
In the acclaimed documentary “John Candy: I Like Me,” which honors her late SCTV coworker, O’Hara played her final feature film role last year.
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