One month into 2026, Hollywood has lost another legend! Catherine O’Hara died Friday, according to Associated Press. She was 71 years old. O’Hara was a gifted comic actor born in Canada. Among her many iconic roles, she played the mother in the first two “Home Alone” films. Following the announcement of his death, his co-star Macaulay Culkinwho played his son in the films, shared a message that made fans cry even more!
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Catherine O’Hara died after an illness
Catherine O’Hara died at her home in Los Angeles “following a brief illness,” according to a statement from her agency, Creative Artists Agency. There are no further details about this disease at this time. It is unclear whether the actress was alone when she died.
She is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, and her sons Matthew and Luke. Additionally, she is survived by six siblings, Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O’Hara, Tom O’Hara and Patricia Wallice.
Macaulay Culkin shares a message for his film ‘Mama’
Hours after news of his death broke, Macaulay Culkin pushed saddened fans over the edge with a throwback to his childhood. He shared a screenshot of him and Catherine O’Hara in the movie “Home Alone” alongside a photo of them from two years ago. In the most recent photo, Macaulay was supporting Catherine during her star reveal on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on December 1, 2023.
In the caption of his tribute post, which he shared on several platforms including Instagram and Threads, he called O’Hara “Mom.”
“I thought we had time. 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. I’ll see you later,” Macaulay Culkin wrote.
More than 20,000 Instagram users slid into her comments section on IG to share their love, condolences and heartbreak. The post also garnered nearly 700,000 likes and counting.
Catherine built an unforgettable legacy
O’Hara’s career began at Toronto’s Second City in the 1970s. It was there that she first worked with Eugene Levy, who would become a lifelong collaborator — and her partner on “Schitt’s Creek.” The two would be part of the original cast of the sketch show “SCTV,” short for “Second City Television.” The series, which began on Canadian television in the 1970s and aired on NBC in the United States in the early ’80s, spawned a legendary group of esoteric comedians, including Martin Short, John Candy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis and Joe Flaherty.
Hollywood didn’t really know what to make of O’Hara and her scattered style. She played odd supporting characters in Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” in 1985 and Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice” in 1988 — a role she would reprise in the 2024 sequel.
She played him primarily as a horrified mother who accidentally abandoned her child in both “Home Alone” films. The films were among the biggest box office grossers of the early 1990s and their Christmas setting made them must-see television.
O’Hara would find her groove with the team of improv professionals assembled 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 Might Wind” and 2006’s “For Your Consideration.”
“Schitt’s Creek” would be a career triumph and the perfect personification of his comedic talents. The small series created by Levy and his son Dan about a wealthy family forced to live in a small town would dominate the Emmys in its sixth and final season. It brought O’Hara, a still-beloved figure, to a new generation of fans and placed her at the center of cultural attention.
She told the Associated Press that she imagined Moira, a former soap star, as someone who had married richly and wanted to “remind everyone that she was special too.” With an exaggerated Mid-Atlantic accent and obscure vocabulary, Moira spoke like no one else, using words like “frippet,” “pettifogging” and “unasenous” to show her desire to be different, O’Hara said. To perfect Moira’s voice, O’Hara would pore over old vocabulary books, “Moira-izing” the dialogue even further than what was already written.
The series also brought a career renaissance that led to a dramatic turn in HBO’s “The Last of Us” and a small role as a Hollywood producer in “The Studio,” both of which earned her Emmy nominations.
AP Entertainment writers Andrew Dalton, Jocelyn Noveck, Lindsey Bahr and RJ Rico contributed to this report via AP Newsroom.
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