By Danielle Broadway in Los Angeles

Catherine O’Hara, the shape-shifting Canadian comic actress whose characters ranged from the deliriously theatrical ‍Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek to the frantic mother in Home Alone, has died at 71 – prompting an outpouring of tributes led ​by her co-star Macaulay Culkin and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

A representative from the office of her manager Marc ⁠Gurvitz confirmed the death of O’Hara, who earned the 2020 Emmy for best comedy actress, helping to propel Schitt’s Creek to TV awards season dominance at the 2021 Golden Globes.

The BBC, citing a statement from Creative Artists Agency, reported she died on Friday at her home in Los Angeles following a brief illness.

O’Hara portrayed Kate McCallister, the mother of ‌Macaulay Culkin’s character Kevin in ​the movie Home Alone, and Delia Deetz in the film Beetlejuice.

Culkin paid homage to O’Hara on ‍Instagram.

“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 alongside images of the two of them.

Carney wrote ​on X: “I join Canadians and fans across the world in ‌mourning the loss of Catherine O’Hara.”

Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, called her “a beloved Canadian icon with a rare gift for ​comedy and heart” on X.

“She made people laugh across generations.”

O’Hara was born on March 4, 1954, and grew up in Toronto as the sixth of seven children. She began her acting career in 1974 as a cast member of the ​improvisational ​theatre troupe called The Second City in ​Toronto.

O’Hara eventually joined the company in 1974. However, she later confessed to feeling anxious whenever she was on the stage.

“My crutch was, in improvs, when in doubt, play insane. Because you didn’t have to excuse anything that came out of your mouth. It didn’t have to make sense,” she admitted to The New Yorker in 2019.

O’Hara eventually landed a role on a TV sketch show called Second City Television, which aired on NBC in the 80s. The actress became famous for her impressions of various well-known celebrities, including Meryl Streep and Brooke Shields.

She eventually worked with Streep on the film Heartburn and her co-star paid tribute in a statement.

“Catherine O’Hara brought love and light to our world, through whipsmart compassion for the collection of eccentrics she portrayed … such a loss for her family and friends, and the audience she graced as friends,” she said.

O’Hara made her film debut in 1980, when she starred alongside the likes of John Candy and Eugene Levy in Double Negative.

In 1988, she starred as Delia Deetz, the stepmother of Winona Ryder’s Lydia, in the hit movie Beetlejuice, which proved to be a huge commercial success.

Her Beetlejuice co-star Michael Keaton paid tribute, saying: “She’s been my pretend wife, my pretend nemesis and real life true friend”.

“This one hurts. Man am I going to miss her.”

O’Hara – who reprised her most famous role as Kevin’s mum for 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost in New York – told People: “It’s a perfect movie, isn’t it?”

Her her simple, one-word line reading of “KEVIN!!!” – the child she kept leaving behind – became iconic.

O’Hara’s other roles included Best in Show in 2000 and 2003’s A Mighty Wind, as well as the Beetlejuice sequel in 2024.

In 2020, O’Hara won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the hit TV sitcom Schitt’s Creek, which was created by Eugene and Daniel Levy.

During her acceptance speech, O’Hara – who also won a Golden Globe and a SAG Award – said: “I will forever be grateful to Eugene and Daniel Levy for the opportunity to play a woman of a certain age, my age, who gets to fully be herself.”

More recently, O’Hara joined the cast of Seth Rogen’s 2025 Hollywood satire series The Studio as Patty Leigh, the fired head of a Hollywood film studio. She also delved into some dramatic roles, including the 1997 film Hope.

In paying tribute, Rogan said she was “the funniest person I’d ever had the pleasure of watching on screen”.

“Home Alone was the movie that made me want to make movies,” he wrote on Instagram.

“We’re all lucky we got to live in a world with her in it.”

O’Hara is survived by her husband Bo Welch, whom she met in 1987 ‍on the set of “Beetlejuice,” and their two sons.
with People, AP