Catherine O’Hara was the best part of any scene
The Hindu
Because of that innate grasp on her craft, unwillingness to settle into nostalgia and uncanny ability to invent herself anew with each project, Catherine O'Hara's characters would impact multiple generations of film, television and comedy fans
Catherine O’Hara was never afraid to go big. The wild accent as Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek. Delia Deetz’s possessed dance to ‘Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)’ in Beetlejuice. The way she screamed “KEVIN!” in two Home Alonemovies as Kate McCallister.
But it wasn’t boldness alone that made her one of the greats, and her characters memorable: No matter how absurd or how preposterous or even cliche on the page, there was always a beating heart underneath the silliness, a compassion that shone through. Yes, even as Cookie Fleck, with all her ex-boyfriends, in Best in Show.
Kevin Nealon said it simply: “She changed how so many of us understand comedy and humanity.”
Because of that innate grasp on her craft, unwillingness to settle into nostalgia and uncanny ability to invent herself anew with each project, her characters would impact multiple generations of film, television and comedy fans. Before she died at age 71, she was still forging new trails as the ousted studio executive Patty Leigh in The Studio. And she did it all with grace and humility, a diva only when the role and costume demanded it.
As fellow Canadian Sarah Polley, who she acted with on The Studio, wrote on Instagram Friday: “She was the kindest and the classiest. How could she also have been the funniest person in the world?”
Just eight years younger than another comedy trailblazer Gilda Radner, whom she understudied for at The Second City in Toronto, O’Hara was not an obvious candidate for stardom as the second youngest of seven in a decidedly non-showbiz, Catholic family. But she loved comedy, obsessing over Monty Python in high school and even trying to meet them at the airport once after hearing they were flying in. And when her brother began dating Radner, she followed that trail to the improv stage.
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