Inside Catherine O’Hara and John Candy’s sweet decades-long friendship: From ‘SCTV’ to ‘Home Alone’

Catherine O’Hara shared a special bond with her “SCTV” castmate John Candy and even nursed a crush on him.

The actress, whose death was announced on Friday, spoke movingly at Candy’s funeral. The “Uncle Buck” star died in 1994 at the age of 43.

O’Hara said that the two first met in 1974 when she auditioned for Candy, who hired her for a Second City improv group.

“I had a crush on him, of course,” she recounted, “but he was deeply in love with Rose, [Candy’s wife].”

O’Hara, who worked with Candy for 10 years on the groundbreaking comedy series “SCTV,” said the last time she worked with him was in the 1990 smash “Home Alone.”

“He could give them one day, so they took him for 17 hours of improvising,” she noted about his role as Gus Polinski.

The “Schitt’s Creek” star also revealed that Candy died on her 40th birthday.

In the book, “John Candy: A Life in Comedy,” O’Hara recalled getting “the weirdest mix of phone calls,” with people wanting to wish her a happy birthday but also mourn the actor.

“Somebody would call and say, ‘Oh, happy birthday,’ and I’d go, ‘Oh, thanks.’ Then they’d get quiet and say, ‘Yeah, John,’ so we’d talk about John, of course. I was just horribly, horribly sad,” she shared.

“I dreamt about him so much after he died, and I still dream about him once in a while. A couple of years ago, I had a dream, and we were just hanging out and doing bits, and then I said something about him being dead, and he went, ‘Aww, you had to say it out loud,'” she told author Paul Myers.

“And I went, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you knew.’ [And he said] ‘I did, but we didn’t have to say it.’ I felt like I really let him down. I was so, so sad.”

O’Hara lovingly remembered her friend in a 2024 interview with People.

“He would always be willing to do an improv with me after the show. You do a show and then you do improvs after the show. That’s how you build the next show at Second City Theater. And he was always willing to try any idea,” she shared.

She noted that it’s “so nice to be able to not have to make up any bull, because people loved him.”

“And when people ask, ‘What was he like?’ they want to hear what they think he’d be like. And it’s so lovely to be able to validate their guesses about what he would be like in person.”

O’Hara died on Friday at the age of 71, following a brief illness.