Catherine O’Hara in Home Alone.
Photo: 20th Century Fox
The world isn’t as funny as it was last week. Before yesterday, Catherine O’Hara seemed to be near the apex of her comedic powers, landing two Emmy nominations just last fall for her incredible work on The Studio and the beloved adaptation of The Last of Us. Now, to everyone’s shock, she’s gone.
Her unexpected death has led to people sharing clips of one of the best comedians of her era, a person who has been making people laugh for half a century. Whether it was the early days on SCTV, the annual viewings of Home Alone, the incredible improvisational work with Christopher Guest’s troupe, or even her underrated voice work in modern animation, O’Hara was essential. The loss is major, but watch a few of her best works — listed below in chronological order — to help heal the pain. Laughter is the best medicine.
Note: SCTV is one of the most notable “impossible to watch on streaming” shows in existence. Maybe O’Hara’s death will force a change, but that’s why it’s not on the list.
O’Hara made her film debut in an SCTV-heavy 1980 film called Double Negative, but the first time that most people remember seeing her in a movie is in this mid-‘80s masterpiece from Martin Scorsese. She plays Gail, a Mister Softee ice cream truck driver who first seems like a helping hand but becomes an enemy to Griffin Dunne’s Paul on the longest night of his life. It was an early indication of how much O’Hara knew exactly what to do to enhance a project, even with minimal screen time. On VOD.
O’Hara weaponized her prickly persona — one that would become nuclear in her Emmy-winning turn in Schitt’s Creek a generation later — as Delia Deetz in this Tim Burton classic. Delia is the abrasive mother to Lydia, the Winona Ryder goth girl who stole America’s hearts. Her truly awful taste in interior design is eventually punished by Michael Keaton’s Betelgeuse, but not enough that she couldn’t return for the hit Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in 2024. On VOD.
Hot take: Macauley Culkin, Joe Pesci, and Daniel Stern get a lot of attention for this Christmas classic, but it wouldn’t have lasted without the warmth at its core from Catherine O’Hara. Largely playing icier characters up to this point, O’Hara completely understood the assignment as Kate McCallister, setting up the “KEVIN!” fear of the first half and bringing the maternal comfort in the conclusion. Her scene with SCTV buddy John Candy is also a mini-gem that doesn’t get enough attention. On Disney+.
People might not even realize that O’Hara was the voice of Sally, the female lead of Henry Selick’s beloved The Nightmare Before Christmas, arguably the most beloved stop-motion film of all time. It was her first major voice role, but it was far from her last. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Catherine O’Hara has been one of the most essential voice actors of the last three decades. Just look at this list: Chicken Little, Over the Hedge, Monster House, Where the Wild Things Are, Frankenweenie, When Marnie Was There, The Addams Family, Elemental, and The Wild Robot. That’s Burton, Ghibli, Pixar, Dreamworks, and more. She was the unheralded MVP of your childhood. On Disney+.
One of the funniest movies ever made, Guffman not only launched the Guest comedy troupe but dozens of imitators who thought they could play the improv game like these legends. Guest and Levy wrote the story, but it was the cast who brought it to life, including O’Hara as Sheila Albertson, wife to Fred Willard’s Ron. The fact that both Willard and O’Hara are gone now feels particularly poignant. Hopefully, they’re reunited on the comedy stage in the sky. On VOD.
The second film that O’Hara made with Guest remains the best. Acting alongside the director’s usual menagerie of comic actors, O’Hara plays the perfectly named Cookie Fleck, partner to Levy’s Gerry, and mother to a Norwich terrier named Winky. Throughout the improvised film, Cookie keeps meeting old flames, producing belly laughs from the flirtations that make Gerry even more uncomfortable. On VOD.
O’Hara’s third collaboration with Guest’s troue took aim at the world of folk music, centering a reunion concert that featured hysterical original tunes, including one that Levy and O’Hara performed on the Oscars. Almost all of the regular collaborators returned for this venture, and it’s a reminder that one can’t really imagine a Guest joint without O’Hara. She was as essential to this group of comedy geniuses as Levy, McKean, Posey, or even Guest himself. Her loss is really the end of a chapter in comedy history. On YouTube (free with ads) or VOD.
Everyone will remember her for her funny stuff, but O’Hara was just as good at drama. Take, for example, this four-episode arc in the third and fifth seasons of Six Feet Under, where she played Carol Ward, the boss of Lili Taylor’s Lisa Kimmel. Lest you doubt her range, this performance was a reminder that she could do anything (and that Six Feet Under belongs on any list of the best HBO dramas ever). On HBO Max.
Widely considered one of the best original HBO movies, this 2010 Emmy winner was a showcase for Claire Danes as the title character, an autistic woman who not only overcame the expectations of her condition but used it to change the industry of livestock management. It may be a show for Danes, but O’Hara is almost as good as Aunt Ann, the owner of the Arizona cattle ranch that changed Grandin’s life. The project won numerous Emmys, including Outstanding Movie, Actress, and Supporting Actor, and O’Hara likely would have won too if she wasn’t forced to compete in Supporting Actress against her co-star, Julia Ormond. On HBO Max.
It’s hard to believe that people as talented as Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara needed a comeback, but it kinda felt like Schitt’s Creek became theirs when it quietly became one of the biggest comedies in the world. O’Hara plays Moira Rose, a former soap opera star who is forced to move from the upper class to a motel in a small town. What started as a modestly successful Canadian comedy became a worldwide phenomenon in no small part due to O’Hara’s absolutely perfect comic timing, and impossible to place accent. She was nominated twice for the Emmy for this role and won for the final season. It remains one of modern TV’s best comedy performances. On Hulu.
There was a remarkable amount of online handwringing over the quality of the second season of HBO’s hit adaptation of one of the best games of all time, but you know the one thing that everyone could agree on regarding this divisive drama? Catherine O’Hara rules. She does so much in her brief screen time in this season as Gail, the person who can most see through Joel’s shit. She carries the grief of the loss of her husband Eugene deep in her bones. It’s the kind of dramatic turn that one hoped she’d do more in this stage of her career, especially after it earned her an Emmy nod. While it’s easy to lament the lost laughter of her too-young death, this is proof that we lost potentially moving dramatic work in the future, too. On HBO Max.
In many ways, this is the one that hurts the most. There was zero indication that Catherine O’Hara was anywhere near done with her hysterically acerbic arc on this Apple TV smash, one of the biggest comedies of the streaming era. As Patty Leigh, O’Hara captured both a sense of lost glory and the kind of person in Hollywood that is going down anything less than screaming. She fit into this ensemble perfectly, elevating every scene she was in, and she almost certainly was going to be a part of it for years to come. Deposed from her production office by Seth Rogen’s Matt Remick, Patty may not have left Hollywood at the top of her game; Catherine O’Hara did. On Apple TV.
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