Comedy legend, movie matriarch

Catherine O'Hara embodied some of the most memorable matriarchs on film and television.

- BY TRACY BROWN

RYAN ENN HUGHES For The Times FUNNY FOR DECADES Catherine O'Hara is perhaps most beloved for her role as the harried mom in "Home Alone."

On “Schitt’s Creek,” she portrayed Moira Rose, a nonsensical and narcissistic former soap star known as much for her eccentric wigs and designer wardrobe as her dramatics. In “Beetlejuice” she was Delia Deetz, the culture-vulture sculptor who tries to use her stepdaughter’s connection with ghosts for her own benefit.

For a certain generation, she is perhaps most beloved for her role as the caring but harried mother of five who somehow manages to lose track of her youngest son during Christmastime — twice.

O’Hara, the comedy legend who also starred in such classics as “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” has died.

She was 71.

O'Hara died Friday at her home in Los Angeles after a brief illness, her agent at CAA confirmed. No other details were available.

“After ‘Home Alone’ opened, I went to see it at a Saturday matinee packed with shiny, happy children and their parents,” O’Hara said in a speech honoring the film's star, Macaulay Culkin, at his Hollywood Walk of Fame induction ceremony in late 2023. “At one point, I saw two boys get up out of their seats, so not wanting to leave the movie ... they starting running up the aisle and then suddenly, panicked that they might miss something great, they turned around, looked back at the screen and one of them said, ‘It’s OK ... it’s just the mom.’”

But those who associate O’Hara’s panicked shout of “Kevin!” with the holidays will tell you, she was never “just the mom.”

“What most people don’t realize is that Catherine carries the weight of 50% of that film,” “Home Alone” director Chris Columbus said in a statement Friday to the Hollywood Reporter. “The movie simply would not work without her extraordinary performance. Catherine grounds the picture with a profound emotional depth.”