Catherine O’Hara reflected on feeling “lucky” to be alive two years before her death.
“I’m lucky [I get] to keep doing things like this at my age — I can’t believe it,” O’Hara told Elle Canada in August 2024, promoting her appearance in that year’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. “Over the past few years, when I’ve gotten scared or nervous or if I start grousing about something, I’ve tried to really practice turning it around and being grateful. Like, ‘How lucky are you right now to be alive? And then to have this opportunity right here in this moment?’”
O’Hara also opened up about her decision to age naturally.
“I do think of age, but otherwise, I rarely look in the mirror,” she continued. “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. I’d like to think that the kind of roles I’m getting to play now are roles that people are getting to play in life.”
Referring to her role in the Apple TV comedy The Studio, O’Hara added, “I’m playing a studio head who becomes an independent producer — how beautiful is it that someone my age is doing this? It’s the way it should be.”
O’Hara died at age 71 on Friday, January 30, at her Los Angeles home following a “brief illness,” according to a statement from her agency, Creative Artists Agency.
Us Weekly learned that paramedics were called to The Last of Us actress’ home at 4:48 a.m. for a medical aid call, according to a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson. She was transported in “serious condition” to the hospital.
An official cause of death has not yet been revealed.
In her Elle interview, O’Hara opened up about her next chapter following her 70th birthday.
“When [you turn] 70 — this is advice [I read] for anybody turning any older age — imagine that you’re going to live a minimum of another 20 years,” she said. “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? You look forward.”
O’Hara was best known for her roles as Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek, Kate McCallister in Home Alone and Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice and its sequel.
The Canada native reflected on her famous roles in a 2020 interview with People.
“I used to mostly get people named Kevin who’d come up to me and ask me to yell ‘Kevin!’ in their faces,” she shared. “Now it’s mostly about Moira and Schitt’s Creek. I’ve never gotten this kind of attention in my life. It’s crazy.”
Additionally, O’Hara, who married Bo Welch in 1992 after meeting the production designer on the set of Beetlejuice in 1988, told TMZ in February 2024 that she was most proud of being the “mother of her children,” sons Matthew, 32, and Luke, 29. She also told the outlet that her most cherished role was being Welch’s “wife.”
Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin, who starred in the first Beetlejuice movie, said in a statement to Page Six that O’Hara was “one of the greatest comic talents in the movie business.”
“She had a quality that was all her own and my sympathy goes out to Bo and their family,” he continued.
Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen DeGeneres shared a throwback photo from her talk show interview with O’Hara.
“Catherine O’Hara was a brilliant comedian,” she wrote. “Sending love to all who adored her, which might just be everyone.”
Devin Ratray
Devin Ratray, who played O’Hara’s onscreen son Buzz McCallister in the Home Alone movies, shared a throwback photo with the Canada native via Instagram.
“One of the greatest people I ever met. It just doesn’t register. Bewildered and numb,” he wrote.
