Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
timeHe secretly appealed home alone It was never really a booby trap.
What every kid wants is what Macaulay Culkin had: a house to call his own, no rules, and unlimited ice cream. Which means Catherine O’Hara is performing a strange kind of heroism in her role as his disastrously neglectful mother. I was six years old when I first saw her speeding through a Chicago airport, and I knew then that she was the emotional engine of the film. If her character’s panic and inadequacies are what drives the plot, O’Hara’s wild scares breathe life into the film. O’Hara, who died aged 71 After a brief illness, it took five years to make someone with a severe disability not just bearable, but loved.
For our generation, this character will forever be associated with her. But a performance, no matter how perfectly executed, should not overshadow the extraordinary accomplishments she achieved. O’Hara specializes in playing deluded narcissists whose self-image has absolutely no bearing on reality. But you support them anyway. In addition to technical skill, this required her to rigorously refuse to condescend to her role.
Born in 1954, she grew up in Toronto’s Second City in the mid-1970s, filling in for Gilda Radner before joining CCTVthat legendary sketch comedy factory. She won an Emmy Award for her writing and created extremely absurd characters: Laura Heatherton, a third-rate lounge singer; a perfect imitation of Katharine Hepburn and Brooke Shields; What makes her unique is her instinct for finding pathos in grandiosity.
Her voice is a remarkable instrument with an infinite range. Sally by Tim Burton The nightmare before christmas (1993), her singing has a wistful, anguished feel that’s completely different from the brassy, supple vibrato she used elsewhere. That she can effortlessly swing between such disparate contexts—affectionate wallflower and dramatic self-centeredness—is a testament to the versatility that years of sketch comedy have cultivated in her bones.
This talent comes into its own in Christopher Guest’s documentary, which suits her perfectly. Guests would provide the actors with skeleton outlines—sometimes as little as 15 pages—and they would improvise everything else. “Performing for thrill seekers,” O’Hara calls it. exist best show award (2000), she played Cookie Fleck, a Florida housewife dressed in leopard print who is married to an extremely awkward man and who recalls her romance with surprising detail. O’Hara gives her a gum-chewing vulgarity, but becomes more tender.
exist strong wind (2003), a folk singer whose breakup causes her partner to suffer a mental breakdown. She and longtime collaborator Eugene Levy play Mickey and Mickey, who reunite after decades apart. The ending of the film hinges on whether they recreate the iconic kiss from “The Kiss at the End of the Rainbow.” O’Hara learned the autoharp for the song; when they performed it at the 2004 Oscars, she kept her eyes locked on Levy, radiating both love and regret. It lost out to the Lord of the Rings ballad.
But her masterpiece is for your consideration (2006). She’s Marilyn Hack, a working actress who gets wind of Oscar talk and begins to unravel her pursuits. O’Hara charts the descent with laser-guided precision: the pathetic plastic surgeries, the fawning TV appearances, the gradual disappearance of the true self that existed beneath the professional shell. There is an element of irony to the character, but O’Hara deepens it into a portrait of artistic despair because she understands that hope—especially belated hope—can be as corrosive as cynicism.
O’Hara’s great talent is to push empathy to such disturbing extremes. Take Delia Dietz at Burton’s Beetlejuice. In this creepy fantasia, a smaller cast might play her as nothing more than a weirdo. O’Hara makes her even stranger—an eccentric person so sincerely committed to her macabre art that you almost admire her conviction. When she reprized the role last year in Burton’s belated sequel, albeit older but just as ridiculous, it felt less like nostalgia than a reminder that she’d never stopped being unique.
A late-career boost came from schitt’s creek. The Canadian sitcom was already gaining considerable traction before the pandemic — and it’s a sweet antidote to lockdown anxiety. The show, which ran for six seasons, followed the once-wealthy Rose couple who were forced to rebuild their lives in a small town due to fraud. O’Hara plays Moira, the former soap star matriarch with a wig and an accent that comes from nowhere—or, rather, an artificial voice cobbled together from spare parts of her mid-Atlantic range. The character is pure O’Hara: profoundly selfish, utterly ridiculous, and somehow at the show’s wounded core. It earned her Emmy and Golden Globe acting awards that had eluded her for decades. Moira’s wardrobe is as famous as her diction, but it’s O’Hara’s voice – that wonderful, singular instrument – that makes the character indelible.
Watch Apple TV+ for free for 7 days
New subscribers only. £9.99/month. After free trial. Plan automatically renews until canceled.
advertise. If you sign up for this service, we will earn a commission. This revenue helps fund The Independent’s journalism.
Watch Apple TV+ for free for 7 days
New subscribers only. £9.99/month. After free trial. Plan automatically renews until canceled.
advertise. If you sign up for this service, we will earn a commission. This revenue helps fund The Independent’s journalism.
In 1992, she married production designer Bo Welch; Beetlejuice put. They have two sons. In every way, she’s nothing like the character she plays: passionate, self-deprecating, resolutely private. “I like the idea,” she once said, “that humans think they can control the impression they make.” Coming from someone who has spent a career exposing this delusion, that sounds like half a mission statement.
One of her last roles was on Apple TV+ opposite Seth Rogen studioplaying a Hollywood executive aggrieved by being fired. She was nominated for another Emmy Award. Quite right too. Her last public appearance was at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2025, where she received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Levy, her close friend and co-star CCTVcameos, and schitt’s creekpresented to her. “When I think about my happiest days in show business,” she said, “I realize most of them were with you.”
Although O’Hara didn’t give many interviews, what she said has always been remembered. “I think everyone is born interesting,” she once said. “Sadly, some people beat them.” Hers never did. What a terrible loss.