Catherine O’Hara (1954-2026) has been in the public eye since the 1970s so it’s hard to imagine a world without her. In her decades-long career, she gave a wide variety of performances, mostly comic and always believable, always genuine.

She gained national prominence with the sketch comedy SCTV (1976-1984), in which she provided spot-on imitations of Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Tammy Faye Baker, Gilda Radner and Elizabeth Taylor, plus such rarely imitated performers as Meryl Streep, Geraldine Page and Brooke Shields. But maybe more memorable were the characters she invented, such as bawdy singer Dusty Townes, and the emotionally unstable, washed-up singer-actress Lola Hetherton. O’Hara won an Emmy Award and earned four Emmy nominations for her writing on the show.

Before that, O’Hara had performed with Toronto’s Second City Theatre leading to the TV series, which also starred fellow alumni including John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Harold Ramis and Dave Thomas, and later Rick Moranis and Martin Short.

The show became an immediate cult favorite, but it was not easy for fans to find, because it often aired in late-night slots and appeared (and disappeared) sporadically.

Two of O’Hara’s significant working relationships include with filmmaker Tim Burton and SCTV’s Levy. For Burton, she starred in Beetlejuice (1988) and its 2024 sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. She also provided voice work for several of Burton’s stop-motion animated films, including The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, directed by Henry Selik) and Burton’s Frankenweenie (2012).

After years of appearing with Levy in SCTV, they were paired in several Christopher Guest mockumentaries, such as Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), and For Your Consideration (2006).

When Levy and his son Dan Levy created the CBC sitcom Schitt’s Creek (2015-2020), they invited O’Hara to play the family matriarch Moira Rose, a former semi-star who was moves to a small town with her suddenly penniless entire family. O’Hara gave Moira distinctive pronunciation and speech rhythms, speaking like no one else on earth; she had a hard time losing her lofty self-image but proved surprisingly smart and logical when it was required. The show was slow to catch on and built its momentum (and its audience), eventually becoming an international comedy phenomenon in its final seasons. O’Hara was a Golden Globes winner in 2020 for Schitt’s Creek; she was also a nominee this year for the Apple comedy series The Studio.

In film, O’Hara also worked with directors like Martin Scorsese (After Hours, 1985), Mike Nichols (Heartburn), Spike Jonze (Where the Wild Things Are) and Sam Mendes (Away We Go). But her highest-profile film appearance was as Macaulay Culkin’s mom in Christopher Columbus’s Home Alone (1990) and its 1992 sequel.

Her 100+ other appearances include The Larry Sanders Show, Six Feet Under, Temple Grandin (2010), 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm and season 2 of the HBO Max series The Last of Us.