Catherine O'Hara, Emmy-winning comic actor of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone' fame, dies at 71

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Catherine O’Hara, a gifted Canadian-born comic actor and “SCTV” alum who starred as Macaulay Culkin’s harried mother in two “Home Alone” movies and won an Emmy as the dramatically ditzy wealthy matriarch Moira Rose in “Schitt’s Creek,” died Friday. She was 71.

O’Hara died at her home in Los Angeles “following a brief illness,” according to a statement from her representatives at Creative Artists Agency. Further details were not immediately available.

O’Hara’s career was launched with the Second City comedy group in Toronto in the 1970s. It was there that she first worked with Eugene Levy, who would become a lifelong collaborator — and her “Schitt’s Creek” costar. The two would be among the original cast of the sketch show “SCTV,” short for “Second City Television.” The series, which began on Canadian TV in the 1970s and aired on NBC in the U.S., spawned a legendary group of esoteric comedians that O’Hara would work with often, including Martin Short, John Candy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis and Joe Flaherty.

O'Hara would win her first Emmy for her writing on the show.

Her second, for best actress in a comedy series, came four decades later, for “Schitt's Creek,” a career-capping triumph and the perfect personification of her comic talents. The small CBC series created by Levy and his son, Dan, about a wealthy family forced to live in a tiny town would dominate the Emmys in its sixth and final season. It brought O’Hara, always a beloved figure, a new generation of fans and put her at the center of cultural attention.

She told The Associated Press that she pictured Moira, a former soap opera star, as someone who had married rich and wanted to “remind everyone that (she was) special, too.” With an exaggerated Mid-Atlantic accent and obscure vocabulary, Moira spoke unlike anyone else, using words like “frippet,” “pettifogging” and “unasinous,” to show her desire to be different, O’Hara said. To perfect Moira’s voice, O’Hara would pore through old vocabulary books, “Moira-izing” the dialogue even further than what was already written.

O'Hara also won a Golden Globe and two SAG Awards for the role.

At first, Hollywood didn't entirely know what to do with O'Hara and her scattershot style. She played oddball supporting characters in Martin Scorsese's 1985 “After Hours” and Tim Burton's 1988 “Beetlejuice” — a role she would reprise in the 2024 sequel.

She played it mostly straight as a horrified mother who accidentally abandoned her child in the two “Home Alone” movies. The films were among the biggest box office earners of the early 1990s and their Christmas setting made them TV perennials. They allowed her moments of unironic warmth that she didn't get often.

Her co-star Culkin was among those paying her tribute Friday.

“Mama, I thought we had time,” Culkin said on Instagram alongside an image from “Home Alone” and a recent recreation of the same pose. “I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you. But I had so much more to say. I love you.”

Meryl Streep, who worked with O'Hara in “Heartburn,” said in a statement that she “brought love and light to our world, through whipsmart compassion for the collection of eccentrics she portrayed.”

Roles in big Hollywood films didn't follow “Home Alone,” but O'Hara would find her groove with the crew of improv pros brought together by Christopher Guest for a series of mockumentaries that began with 1996's “Waiting for Guffman” and continued with 2000's “Best in Show,” 2003's “A Mighty Wind” and 2006's “For Your Consideration.”

“Best in Show” was the biggest hit and best-remembered film of the series. She and Levy play married couple Gerry and Cookie Fleck, who take their Norwich terrier to a dog show and constantly run into Cookie's former lovers along the way.

“I am devastated,” Guest said in a statement to the AP. “We have lost one of the comic giants of our age.”

Born and raised in Toronto, O’Hara was the sixth of seven children in a Catholic family of Irish descent. She graduated from Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute, an alternative high school. She joined Second City in her early 20s, as an understudy to Gilda Radner before Radner left for “Saturday Night Live.” (O’Hara would briefly be hired for “SNL” but quit before appearing on air.)

Nearly 50 years later, her final roles would be as Seth Rogen’s reluctant executive mentor and freelance fixer on “The Studio” and a dramatic turn as therapist to Pedro Pascal and other dystopia survivors on HBO's “The Last of Us.” Both earned her Emmy nominations. She would get 10 in her career.

“Oh, genius to be near you,” Pascal said on Instagram. “Eternally grateful. There is less light in my world.”

Earlier this month, Rogen shared a photo on Instagram of him and O'Hara shooting the second season of “The Studio.”

O'Hara is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, sons Matthew and Luke, and siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O‘Hara, Tom O’Hara and Patricia Wallice.

Noveck reported from New York. AP Writers Lindsey Bahr, R.J. Rico and Leanne Italie contributed.

FILE - Catherine O'Hara arrives at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Sept. 14, 2025. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Eugene Levy, from left, Annie Murphy, Daniel Levy and Catherine O'Hara cast members in the series "Schitt's Creek" pose for a portrait during the 2018 Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 14, 2018. (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Eugene Levy, left, and Catherine O'Hara appear at the 76th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles. on Feb. 29, 2004. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch, File)

FILE - Catherine O'Hara poses for photographers upon arrival at the UK premiere of "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

FILE - Former cast members of SCTV, from left, Dave Thomas, Joe Flaherty, Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, foreground, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy and Martin Short, pose at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival on March 6, 1999, in Aspen, Colo. (AP Photo/E Pablo Kosmicki, File)

FILE - Catherine O'Hara, a cast member in the Apple+ series "The Studio," poses for a portrait on Thursday, March 20, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran fired on targets across the Middle East while American and Israeli airstrikes hit the Islamic Republic early Friday as the war neared the end of its fifth week unabated and the U.N. Security Council prepared to meet over Tehran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite claims from the U.S. and Israel that Iran’s military capabilities have been all but destroyed, Tehran has continued to keep the pressure on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbors. Bahrain and Kuwait both reported early morning barrages from Iran, while Israel warned of incoming missiles.

Activists reported strikes around Tehran and the central city of Isfahan, but it wasn’t immediately clear what was hit.

Iran’s attacks on Gulf region energy infrastructure and its tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas transits in peacetime, have sent oil prices skyrocketing and is impacting global economies.

Spot prices of Brent crude, the international standard, were around $109 early Friday, up more than 50% from Feb. 28 when Israel and the U.S. started the war with their attacks on Iran.

Shipping had flowed freely through the strait before the war, but U.S. President Donald Trump has said it’s not now Washington’s responsibility to get the waterway reopened, instead putting the onus on others, saying this week that the countries that depend more on fuel shipped through Hormuz should “build some delayed courage” and go “take it.”

The U.N. Security Council was expected to vote Saturday on a proposal from Bahrain that would authorize defensive action to ensure vessels can safely transit the strait. Bahrain’s initial draft would have allowed countries to “use all necessary means” to secure the strait, but Russia, China and France — who have veto power on the Council — expressed opposition to approving the use of force.

Speaking Thursday in South Korea, French President Emmanuel Macron said the American expectation that the Strait of Hormuz could be reopened by force was unrealistic.

Macron said a military operation “would take an infinite amount of time and would expose anyone passing through the strait to coastal threats from (Iran’s) Revolutionary Guard." He added that reopening of the strait “can only be done in coordination with Iran,” through negotiations that would follow a potential ceasefire.

Talks organized by Britain and involving more than 40 countries focused on political rather than military means to secure the strait. The nations, which didn't include the U.S., urged increased diplomatic pressure on Iran and possible sanctions.

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 U.S. service members have been killed.

More than 1,300 people have been killed and more than 1 million displaced in Lebanon, where Israel has launched a ground invasion in its fight with the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militant group. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.

Rising reported from Bangkok. AP journalists Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Israeli security forces and rescue teams inspect a site struck by an Iranian missile in Petah Tikva, Israel,Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

A boy who fled with his family following Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon sits inside the van they are using as shelter in Sidon, Lebanon, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Israeli security forces and rescue teams inspect a site struck by an Iranian missile in Petah Tikva, Israel,Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)