Catherine O’Hara Dead at 71

Catherine O’Hara, the Emmy Award-winning actress best known for her roles in Home Alone and Schitt’s Creek, has died at age 71.

The Canadian actress died Friday, her manager confirmed to PEOPLE, but her cause of death has not been disclosed. TMZ was first to report the news.

O’Hara is best known for playing the eccentric Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek, as well as Macaulay Culkin’s on-screen mother in the Home Alone films. Her other prominent titles include Beetlejuice (1998), A Mighty Wind (2003), and Best in Show (2003).

O’Hara began her comedy career in 1974 as a cast member of The Second City in her hometown of Toronto, where she served as an understudy for Gilda Radner until Radner left for Saturday Night Live. O’Hara was also briefly cast on SNL in 1981, but quit the show without making her on-air debut, choosing to return to sketch comedy show SCTV after it signed with NBC. O’Hara’s high school best friend, Robin Duke, took her SNL slot, and her work as a writer on SCTV went on to earn her five Emmy nominations and one win.

Following the end of SCTV in 1984, O’Hara went on to pursue more acting roles, making her film debut in 1980’s Double Negative alongside Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty and John Candy, paving the way for her roles in Martin Scorsese’s 1985 comedy After Hours, 1986’s Heartburn, and 1988’s Beetlejuice, which she revisited in the 2024 sequel Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

It was in 1990’s Home Alone that O’Hara found her breakout moment, however, playing the distressed mom of Culkin’s Kevin. She would go on to reprise that role as well in 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

In 2015, her career saw a resurgence once again as she debuted the iconic television role of Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek, a role she would play for six seasons and that earned her both a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series as well as a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy.

O’Hara most recently appeared opposite Seth Rogen on Apple TV’s The Studio, for which she earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

Her other TV credits include Six Feet Under, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and The Last of Us.

O’Hara is survived by her production designer husband, Bo Welch, whom she married in 1992 after meeting on the set of Beetlejuice, and their two sons, Matthew and Luke.