Catherine O’Hara Biography, Career, Movies, TV Shows, Death & Net Worth
Catherine O’Hara (March 4, 1954 – January 30, 2026) was a Canadian and American actress, comedian, and screenwriter whose career lasted over 50 years. She began her career in film and television with sketch and improvisational humour before transitioning to dramatic parts.
She garnered multiple awards, including two Primetime Emmys, a Golden Globe, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. The films in which O’Hara appeared made more than $4.3 billion worldwide. She was named to the Order of Canada in 2017.
Catherine O’Hara Biography
Catherine Anne O’Hara was born on March 4, 1954, in Toronto, where she was raised. Her family is Catholic and of Irish origin. She was the sixth of seven children and the younger sister of Mary Margaret O’Hara, a musician and actor. She graduated from Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute in 1974, when she was taught by Carolyn Parrish, the future mayor of Mississauga.
Career
After graduating from high school, O’Hara worked as a waiter at Toronto’s improvisational comedy club Second City Theatre. She soon became Gilda Radner’s understudy, and she joined the company after Radner left in 1974.
O’Hara was a cast member of the troupe’s sketch comedy TV show SCTV, which premiered in 1976. She was famous for her expert celebrity impersonations as well as the characters she invented.
When SCTV was picked up in 1981 for a late-night slot in the United States, O’Hara, who had previously worked for Saturday Night Live, returned. She was awarded an Emmy in 1982 for her literary efforts to SCTV.
During this time, O’Hara appeared in several Canadian television and film comedies. By the time SCTV ended in 1983, she was well-known and starting to obtain stronger roles, such as secondary characters in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) and Mike Nichols’ Heartburn (1986).
She later played Delia, one of the unpleasant living owners of a haunted mansion, in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988). She had a few more TV and film appearances before landing the role for which she is most known: the mother who mistakenly abandons one of her children in the classic comedy Home Alone (1990). She reprised the role in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992).
O’Hara returned to work with Burton, voicing two characters in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), and made cameo appearances on TV comedies such as The Larry Sanders Show. She also appears in Ron Howard’s film The Paper (1994).
O’Hara started one of her most fruitful partnerships by appearing in Christopher Guest’s highly improvised Waiting for Guffman (1996) is a mockumentary about a small town community theatre.
She has also been in Guest’s Best in Show (2000), a comedy about dog shows, and A Mighty Wind (2003), in which she and Eugene Levy (her husband in Best in Show) play an ageing folk-music pair who had a hit record in the 1960s.
That song, “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow,” received an Academy Award nomination, and O’Hara and Levy performed it live on television in 2004. In Guest’s For Your Consideration (2006), O’Hara portrayed an ageing actress who aspires to win an Oscar for her role in the fictional Home for Purim.
O’Hara also appeared in the crime drama The Life Before This (1999), the comedy Orange County (2002), A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), the fantasy Penelope (2006), Away We Go (2009), and the television series Temple Grandin (2010). She starred in various television sitcoms, including a recurring part on Six Feet Under (2003 and 2005).
Her vocal roles include Over the Hedge (2006), Burton’s Frankenweenie (2012), and one of the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are (2009).
O’Hara later collaborated with Levy on the popular television series Schitt’s Creek (2015-20), about a wealthy family who lose their money and are forced to live in the titular small town; for her portrayal of former soap opera star Moira Rose—known for her over-the-top personality and unrecognisable accent—O’Hara received an Emmy Award in 2020.
She switched gears for Pain Hustlers (2023), a drama about the opioid issue starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans. In 2024, O’Hara reunited with Burton for Beetlejuice, a sequel to the 1988 film.
Other returning cast members were Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder. O’Hara later returned to television for numerous well-received programs. In 2025, she played a psychologist in the second season of The Last of Us, a dystopian drama based on a video game.
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey were also among the cast members. That year, O’Hara also appeared as a Hollywood producer in the dramedy The Studio, starring Seth Rogen.
O’Hara was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2017 and earned the Governor General’s Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award in 2020.
Filmography
- Nothing Personal
- Deadly Companion
- Rock & Rule
- After Hours
- Heartburn
- Beetlejuice
- Dick Tracy
- Betsy’s Wedding
- Home Alone
- There Goes the Neighborhood
- Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
Cause of Death
She suffered dextrocardia with situs inversus, which means her heart and other main internal organs were inverted from their normal locations. On January 30, 2026, a representative for the Los Angeles Fire agency stated that the agency received a call from O’Hara’s home address at 4:48 a.m. about a lady who was thought to be O’Hara. She was taken to the hospital “in serious condition”. O’Hara died later that day in Los Angeles, aged 71.
Personal Life
While working on Beetlejuice (1988), O’Hara met Bo Welch, who was a production designer, art director, and director. The couple married in 1992 and went on to have two kids, Matthew and Luke Welch.
O’Hara had both Canadian and American citizenship. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2017 and invested the following year. In 2021, she was appointed honorary mayor of Brentwood, Los Angeles.
Catherine O’Hara Net Worth
Catherine O’Hara had an estimated net worth of $10 million when she died in 2026. Her riches stem from a successful career in film, television, and voice acting, which includes memorable appearances in “Schitt’s Creek,” “Home Alone,” and “Beetlejuice,” as well as work as a writer and producer.
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