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Catherine O'Hara, Home Alone & Schitt's Creek Star, Dead at 71
Catherine O'Hara’s career was anything but boring, lethargic or dripping with ennui.
Nearly three weeks before the actress died at age 71, she earned a nomination for Best Supporting Female Actor on Television for The Studio at the 2026 Golden Globes.
Although Catherine wasn't in attendance at the Jan. 11 ceremony, her eccentric turnas former studio head Patty Leigh in the Seth Rogen-created TV show was unforgettable. But to sign on, she needed some convincing from Seth and needed some convincing Evan Goldberg.
"They made it sound like it was going to be so good and so fun and so informative," she told Forbes in March 2025. "They describe great characters. Then, the scripts came in and they were great—really funny. I've never played, I don't think, someone like this in this kind of power position, who loses it right away."
Patty may have felt out of her wheelhouse, but the Home Alone actress has always been up for a challenge. Since making her onscreen debut in 1975's Wayne and Shuster, Catherine starred in more than 120 projects, like Beetlejuice, Best in Show and Home Alone.
"I loved the script," she told E! News of the holiday movie, also starring Macaulay Culkin, "and it was a lovely, fun experience and all those lovely kids."
She credited her family for nurturing her comedic talents.
"I think everyone's born funny," she said at the USC Comedy Festival in 2023. "But you either are fortunate enough to have it encouraged, or you have life beat it out of you, unfortunately. I was very fortunate to grow up in a fun family."
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
She found her footing in the genre, with one of her most beloved TV roles being former soap opera star Moira Rose in Schitt's Creek. For Catherine—who won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the role at the 2020 Emmys—it was an honor to bring the dramatic yet endearing matriarch to life.
"I just wanted to have a character that I wanted to live with," she teased to E! News in 2019. "But 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."
She said she knew Moira had inspired older women to "take a few more chances, to inspire people to have fun with wigs, and God bless them if they have to have them."
For a look back at Catherine's life in photos, keep reading.
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