A memoir of Moira: Catherine O’Hara passes away at 71, leaving behind a legacy of laughter

LOS ANGELES: The world of stage and screen feels a little quieter, and certainly less colourful, following the news that Catherine O’Hara has passed away at the age of 71. A performer of singular wit and boundless imagination, she died on 30 January 2026 at her home in Los Angeles after a brief illness.

While the official cause of death has not yet been disclosed, O’Hara’s long-standing health condition had been publicly known. She was born with a rare congenital condition called dextrocardia with situs inversus, in which the heart is positioned on the right side of the chest and other major organs are arranged in a mirror-image layout. Though the condition typically does not cause serious medical complications or symptoms, it remained a notable aspect of her medical history.  

Her departure marks the end of an era for comedy, leaving behind a legacy that transformed the awkward, the eccentric, and the absurd into something profoundly human.

The world knew Catherine O’ Hara by many names: Moira Rose, the wildly dramatic and delightfully out-of-touch matriarch of the Rose family; Kate McCallister, the forgetful yet fiercely loving mother who crossed continents for her child; Delia Deetz, Tim Burton’s tragically stepmother chic with a flair for the bizarre; and Sally, forlorn yet quietly hopeful.

O’Hara’s characters were never perfect; they were messy, flawed, painfully human, and deeply empathetic. Through them, she showed us that motherhood doesn’t always look warm and doting, but it is steadfast in moments that matter most. She reminded us that it’s okay to be unhinged, unapologetically imperfect, and still accountable because that’s what makes people real.

Though comedy was her natural home, O’Hara possessed remarkable range. From her haunting turn as a grieving therapist in Season 2 of HBO’s dystopian drama The Last of Us to breathing life into a host of wonderfully strange characters across Tim Burton’s cinematic universe, she consistently left her mark.

From Toronto to the pantheon of greats

Born in Toronto in 1954, O’Hara was the sixth of seven children in a family where humour was not just a pastime but a necessity. Her career began in the fertile ground of the Second City improvisational troupe, where she worked alongside future icons such as Eugene Levy and John Candy. It was during the SCTV years that she established herself as a chameleonic force, creating characters that felt both impossibly strange and startlingly real. Her ability to inhabit a role entirely, from the frantic energy of Lola Heatherton to her razor-sharp celebrity impressions, set a new standard for ensemble comedy.

A career of iconic matriarchs

Her characters didn’t coddle. They stumbled into the room, said something wildly inappropriate, and somehow, against all odds, made you feel seen. In their chaos lived a quiet, stubborn devotion that felt more honest than any picture-perfect portrayal ever could. O’Hara’s characters taught us that being flawed wasn’t a flaw at all, it was the most human thing a person could be. Messy, unhinged, and empathetic: that was her signature.

While many actors spend a lifetime searching for one definitive role, O’Hara seemed to find them every decade. In 1988, she gave us the quintessential avant-garde snob Delia Deetz in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, a performance she revisited with characteristic panache in the 2024 sequel. To millions of families around the globe, however, she was Kate McCallister in Home Alone. She brought a genuine, frantic heart to the role of a mother desperately trying to reach her son, proving that she could anchor a slapstick blockbuster with real emotional weight.

Her collaborative work with Christopher Guest in mockumentaries like Best in Show and A Mighty Wind further showcased her genius. As Cookie Fleck or Mickey Crabbe, she navigated the thin line between caricature and character study, often finding the soul in the most ridiculous of circumstances.

She even brought her sharp wit to Seth Rogen’s biting Hollywood satire, playing Patty Leigh: a cutthroat studio executive unceremoniously ousted by her own underling. It was O’Hara doing what she does best: finding the humanity in power, and the absurdity in its collapse.  

The Moira Rose renaissance

In the final chapter of her life, O’Hara experienced a cultural coronation that few performers enjoy so late in their careers. As Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek, she created a masterpiece of television history. With her incomprehensible accents, a wardrobe of architectural wigs, and a vocabulary that required a dictionary to navigate, Moira became an instant icon. Yet beneath the feathers and the artifice, O’Hara found a woman who loved her family fiercely. Her sweep of the major acting awards in 2020 was a fitting tribute to a woman who had been the actor’s actor for nearly fifty years.

Even in her final year, she remained at the top of her craft, earning Emmy nominations for her work in The Last of Us and The Studio, proving that her creative fire had never dimmed.

A person of grace and humility

Beyond the wigs and the costumes, Catherine O’Hara was known as a woman of immense warmth and professional generosity. She remained married to production designer Bo Welch for over thirty years, a rarity in the industry, and raised two sons, Matthew and Luke, far from the glare of the tabloids. She was a collaborator who elevated every scene she was in, often stepping back to let others shine, though her presence was always the magnetic north of any production.

Her friend and lifelong collaborator Eugene Levy once remarked that she was the most naturally gifted person he had ever met. It was a sentiment echoed by the global outpouring of grief from colleagues and fans alike, who saw in her a rare kind of light, one that found joy in the weird and the dignity in the difference.

The final bow

Catherine O’Hara leaves behind a body of work that will be studied, quoted, and cherished for as long as people need a reason to laugh. She taught us that it is perfectly fine to be a little bit “off,” that family is found in the strangest of places, and that life, no matter how tragic or mundane, is always better with a touch of the theatrical.

The wigs have been boxed away and the lights have dimmed, but the laughter she sparked remains a permanent part of the atmosphere.