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What Catherine O'Hara Said About Her Health Before Her Death at 71
"Am I dying or something?"
So Catherine O'Hara quipped less than a year ago during a sit-down with her fellow stars of The Studio, agreeing that had felt more powerful lately as an actor.
"This is how we wanted to tell you," Seth Rogen cracked. Motioning to a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, he added, "This man's actually a doctor. This is a fake interview."
The whole group burst out laughing.
And that was how O'Hara told so many stories, with smiles and hilarious self-deprecation, her joie de vivre always on display. Hence the utter shock when news broke Jan. 30 that the perennially vibrant actress had died at the age of 71 following, according to her reps at CAA, "a brief illness."
A cause of death has not been shared, but O'Hara was absent from the Golden Globes Jan. 7 despite being nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series for her turn as jaded exec- turned-producer Patty Leigh, the mentor of Rogan's harried studio head.
While she never mentioned any particular health problem, O'Hara did confirm that she had a condition called cardiac inversus, or dextrocardia with situs inversus, a rare congenital condition in which a person's heart and other internal organs are on the other side of the body, creating a mirror image of where most people's organs are.
Amy Sussman/Getty Images
"I'm a freak, yeah!" O'Hara quipped during a 2021 interview, in which she recalled finding out she had the condition while reluctantly going to the doctor with her husband Bo Welch to get tuberculosis tests before their son started nursery school. "I love Western medicine, I just don't want to be a part of it."
While undergoing "baseline tests," including an EKG, O'Hara was told they were going to use another machine. Then the nurse told her the doctor wanted to do an X-ray.
Afteward, she remembered, "He calls us into his office and says, 'You're the first one I've met!' And it's, 'OK, I don't even know the name, 'cause I don't want to know the name.' Something cardi-inversa. And then dexter-cardia-and-something-inversa."
"People are going to think I'm so ignorant not to know this," she added, "but I kind of don't want to know. 'Cause I didn't know before that."
While a person can live their whole life without even knowing they have situs inversus, it can cause complications, especially when the heart is involved.
"I'm one of seven kids," O'Hara—mom to sons Matthew, 31, and Luke, 27, with Welch—continued. And while her parents "had left the world" by the time she found out, driving home from the doctor that day she was "wondering about my other siblings, if they know where their hearts are."
Coincidentally, she called one of her brothers, only to hear from her sister-in-law that he had undergone quadruple bypass surgery that day. But, O'Hara noted, his heart was on the left side.
"So," she added with mock-severity, "he kind of scooped my story that day."
Not to mention, O'Hara recalled, when the doctor told the actress that her heart and other organs were flipped, her husband immediately interjected, "No, her head's on backwards."
A vintage O'Hara moment.
As a woman of a certain age in Hollywood, the veteran star of Home Alone, Beetlejuice, Best in Show, Schitt's Creek and so much more was frequently asked about how she handled growing older. And to her credit, O'Hara always seemed to be much more focused on enjoying the moment or looking forward rather than looking back.
"I do think of age, but otherwise, I rarely look in the mirror,” the Toronto native told Elle Canada for its September 2024 issue.. “I feel that now, stories about people my age usually have to do with death and divorce and disease. So I’m really fortunate [to] have people around me who respect aging people and who give me new experiences."
O'Hara then passed on some advice she read somewhere: "Imagine that you’re going to live a minimum of another 20 years. What are you going to do with those years? If you look at it that way, you look at it as a challenge. Like, instead of ‘Oh no, I’m going to downsize’ or ‘I’m going to slow down,’ imagine that you are going to live to 90. What are you going to do?'"
Her answer was, "You look forward.”
As for how she maintained her glow, O'Hara again called herself "a freak" in 2022, "in that I’ve never had anything done to my face," she told Entertainment Tonight Canada. I don’t want to get surgery and I don’t want to get needles, other than acupuncture needles. I believe we should embrace and respect age and love ourselves for it.”
Keep reading to see O'Hara's inimitable life and career in pictures:
NBC/GETTY IMAGES
1981
Reg Innell / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
1982
John Mahler / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
1983
NBC / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
1984
Bonnie Schiffman Photography / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
1986
Paramount/Kobal
1986
20th Century Fox/Kobal
1990
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1990
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1991
Don Smetzer/20th Century Fox/Kobal
1992
Ron Galella, Ltd. / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
1993
John Bramley/Touchstone/Kobal
1994
Archive Photos / Stringer / GETTY IMAGES
1996
Deana Newcomb/Warner Bros/Kobal
1997
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1997
Ron Galella / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
1998
Jeff Kravitz / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
1999
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2000
Kevin Winter / Staff / GETTY IMAGES
2001
Hbo/Kobal
2001
Kevin Winter / Staff / GETTY IMAGES
2002
Suzanne Tenner/Warner Bros/Kobal
2003
Steve Granitz / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
2003
Kevin Winter / Staff / GETTY IMAGES
2004
Suzanne Tenner/Dreamworks/Kobal
2004
English (US)