Catherine O'Hara, Home Alone & Schitt's Creek Star, Dead at 71

“There’s no better survival instinct,” she added. “You’re so lucky if you’re raised with it. It’s one of God’s greatest gifts, because life is full of the dark and the light. You gotta look for the light. My parents were both really funny, and a sense of humor was always appreciated. Laughing and being funny was highly encouraged at our table."

It was a gift that Catherine kept on giving, always. She was a fixture in the late ‘80s and ‘90s for her role as Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice as well as Macaulay Culkin’s mother in his beloved Home Alone franchise. 

“I love it!” Catherine told E! News of the film in 2021. “Because I have my own and there's movies that I have to watch every Christmas." 

Her second act came in 2015, when she had a career resurgence for her iconic role as Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek. 

“I just wanted to have a character that I wanted to live with,” Catherine told E! in 2020.  “The fact that anyone else cares about her or finds her entertaining, or even thinks she's crazy, or some people actually talk about how they learn something from her.”

Indeed, Catherine said she wanted her character to, hopefully, “inspire older women.”

“To dress a little hipper,” she added. “take a few more chances, to inspire people to have fun with wigs, and God bless them if they have to have them.”

Ultimately, it became the role of a lifetime.

“When I think of my happiest days in show business,” Catherine told costar and the show's creator Eugene Levy while accepting the TIFF Tribute Norman Jewison Career Achievement Award in September, during one of her last public appearances prior to her death. “I realize most of them have been with you.”

Like Eugene left a mark on her, Catherine undoubtedly touched all whom she worked with. Shortly after news of her passing broke Pedro Pascal, who starred with her in The Last of Us, detailed what their time on set meant to him

"Oh, genius to be near you," he wrote in a Jan. 30 Instagram post. "Eternally grateful. There is less light in my world, this lucky world that had you, will keep you, always. Always."

Meanwhile, Macaulay, who worked with Catherine starting from age 9, lamented at losing his Home Alone mom when he "thought we had time."

"I wanted more," he wrote in his own Instagram tribute. "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."

For more of Catherine’s life in photos, keep reading…