Catherine O'Hara: The Life Story Behind the Schitt's Creek Star
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Catherine O’Hara was born on 4 March 1954 in Toronto, Canada, and she became one of the most beloved comedians of her generation, a performer whose characters, from the delusional actress Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek to the frantic mother in Home Alone, are quoted, imitated, and loved around the world. She began in Toronto’s Second City theatre, became a star on the sketch show SCTV, and spent four decades moving between film, television, and voice work, always with the same gift: the ability to make a ridiculous character feel human. Her career had a long middle period in which she was a reliable supporting player, and then, in her sixties, a second act that made her more famous than ever, with an Emmy Award for Schitt’s Creek and a new generation of fans. Catherine O’Hara’s story is about patience, versatility, and a comedian who never stopped being funny, even when the industry stopped noticing.
Toronto: The Seventh Child in a Big Irish Family
Catherine Anne O’Hara was born in Toronto, Ontario, as the sixth of seven children, in a large Irish Catholic family, and she grew up in a household that was noisy, funny, and full of siblings. Her father worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway, her mother was a homemaker, and the family lived in a modest house in Toronto, where Catherine learned to entertain her brothers and sisters by imitating people, telling jokes, and performing at the dinner table. She attended Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute in Etobicoke, a suburb of Toronto, where she was a good student but not a standout, and where her interest in performing was already clear to her friends. The large family gave her an audience from birth, and the habit of making people laugh, learned at home, became the foundation of her career. Toronto in the 1960s was a city with a growing theatre scene, and Catherine, as a teenager, began to pay attention to comedy, watching television sketch shows and dreaming of performing.
As a young woman O’Hara worked as a waitress and took other jobs while she figured out what she wanted to do, and the decision to pursue comedy came when she auditioned for Toronto’s Second City theatre, the improvisational company that had launched the careers of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Gilda Radner. Second City in Toronto was a training ground for comedians, with a stage, a bar, and an audience that expected to laugh, and O’Hara joined the company in the mid-1970s, learning improvisation, sketch writing, and character work. The Second City method, in which performers create scenes on the spot from audience suggestions, taught her to think quickly, to listen to her fellow performers, and to build a character from a single detail, a voice, a walk, or a catchphrase. She worked alongside Eugene Levy, who would become her lifelong collaborator, and the two developed a comic partnership that would last for fifty years. The Second City years were the foundation of everything that followed, and they gave O’Hara a set of skills that no acting school could have provided.
The Second City stage was also where O’Hara learned to write, because the company’s shows were created by the performers themselves, who wrote sketches, developed characters, and revised their work in front of a live audience every night. She created characters that were exaggerated but recognisable, women who were delusional, pretentious, or desperate, and who were funny because they believed in themselves completely. The audience’s response taught her what worked and what did not, and the nightly discipline of performing, failing, and trying again gave her a resilience that served her for the rest of her career. By the late 1970s she was one of Second City’s most reliable performers, and the company’s success led to a television opportunity that would make her famous across Canada and the United States. The waitressing jobs were over, and the comedy career had begun, although O’Hara, like many comedians, would spend years waiting for the wider world to notice what Toronto already knew.
Second City and the Education of a Comedian
In 1976 O’Hara joined the cast of SCTV, Second City Television, a sketch comedy show that began in Canada and later moved to the United States, where it became a cult favourite and won Emmy Awards. SCTV was a parody of a television station, with the cast playing station owners, actors, and presenters, and O’Hara’s characters included the flamboyant singer Lola Heatherton, a parody of a Las Vegas lounge singer, and the earnest, slightly dim actress Dusty Towne. The show’s cast included John Candy, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, and Dave Thomas, a group that is now regarded as one of the greatest comedy ensembles in television history. O’Hara’s work on SCTV was inventive, fearless, and funny, and her characters, with their big hair, their heavy makeup, and their delusions of grandeur, became favourites with viewers. The show ran, in various forms, from 1976 to 1984, and it won Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing, with O’Hara sharing in the writing honours. SCTV made her a star in comedy circles, and it gave her a showcase for the character work that would define her career.
SCTV’s style was different from Saturday Night Live, its American rival, because it was more character-driven, more satirical, and more willing to let a sketch run long, and O’Hara thrived in that environment, creating characters that were fully realised rather than one-joke impressions. Her Lola Heatherton, a singer who believed she was a major star despite all evidence to the contrary, was a masterpiece of comic delusion, with a voice, a walk, and a wardrobe that were all slightly wrong in exactly the right way. Her other characters, including the soap opera actress and the game show hostess, showed her range, and her ability to play both glamorous and grotesque, often in the same episode, made her one of the show’s most versatile performers. The writing on SCTV was collaborative, with the cast working together to develop sketches, and O’Hara’s contributions as a writer were recognised with Emmy Awards. The show’s legacy is enormous, and its cast went on to dominate film and television comedy for the next forty years, with O’Hara as one of its most respected members.
The end of SCTV in 1984 left O’Hara with a reputation as a brilliant sketch comedian but without a regular television home, and the years that followed were spent in film, where she took supporting roles that used her comic talent in smaller doses. She appeared in the film After Hours in 1985, directed by Martin Scorsese, in a small but memorable role, and in the film Heartburn in 1986, alongside Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. The film work was steady but not starring, and O’Hara, like many SCTV alumni, found that the transition from sketch comedy to film was difficult, because film roles for comedians were often limited to supporting parts. She continued to work in television, with guest appearances and voice roles, and she waited for the film role that would show a wider audience what SCTV viewers already knew. That role came in 1988, in a film about a dead couple and a bio-exorcist, and it made her a star in a new medium.
SCTV: The Sketch Show That Made Her Famous
Beetlejuice, released in 1988 and directed by Tim Burton, starred Michael Keaton as the bio-exorcist Betelgeuse, with Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis as the dead couple, and O’Hara as Delia Deetz, the pretentious, artistic stepmother who moves into their house. Delia is a sculptor who believes she is a great artist, and O’Hara played her with a combination of pretension, insecurity, and comic timing that made the character one of the film’s highlights. The film was a commercial success and became a cult favourite, and O’Hara’s performance, with her dramatic poses, her affected voice, and her horror at the supernatural events around her, was widely praised. Beetlejuice showed that O’Hara could play a character in a major Hollywood film, and it introduced her to an audience that had never seen SCTV. The film’s success led to more film work, and O’Hara’s career in the late 1980s and early 1990s was busy, with roles in comedies and dramas that used her talent for playing eccentric, larger-than-life women.
Two years after Beetlejuice, O’Hara took the role that made her famous to a mass audience: Kate McCallister, the mother in Home Alone, released in 1990, who realises, on a flight to Paris, that she has left her eight-year-old son Kevin at home. The film, written by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus, starred Macaulay Culkin as Kevin, and it became one of the highest-grossing comedies of all time, a Christmas staple that is still watched every year. O’Hara’s performance as Kate, a mother whose panic turns to determination as she tries to get home, was the emotional centre of the film, and her frantic journey, by plane, by train, and by van with a polka band, provided some of the film’s funniest moments. She returned for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York in 1992, and the two films together made her a familiar face to millions of families. The role was a supporting one, but it was a crucial one, because Kate’s love for Kevin is the reason the audience cares, and O’Hara’s performance gave that love a comic, human face.
The Home Alone films were followed by a long period in which O’Hara worked steadily in film and television, with roles in The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993, in which she voiced Sally, the rag doll, and in the film A Simple Wish in 1997, and in the television series The Outer Limits and others. She also did voice work in animated films, including Chicken Little in 2005 and Over the Hedge in 2006, and she appeared in the film Penelope in 2006. The 1990s and 2000s were productive years, but they were also years in which O’Hara was rarely the star, and her roles were often supporting, as a mother, an aunt, or an eccentric neighbour. She worked consistently, and she was respected by her peers, but the wider public knew her face without always knowing her name. The period was a holding pattern, and it lasted for more than a decade, until a new collaboration with an old friend changed everything.
Home Alone, Beetlejuice and the Film Years
In the late 1990s O’Hara began working with the director Christopher Guest, in a series of improvised mockumentary films that became some of the most acclaimed comedies of their era. The first was Waiting for Guffman in 1996, in which O’Hara played Sheila Albertson, a travel agent who is part of a small-town theatre production, and the film’s improvised style, in which the actors created their characters and their dialogue on the spot, suited O’Hara’s Second City training perfectly. She followed it with Best in Show in 2000, in which she played Cookie Fleck, a woman whose past as a singer in a sleazy bar is a running joke, and whose performance, with her husband played by Eugene Levy, is one of the film’s funniest. The film’s dog show setting gave O’Hara a chance to play a character who is both vulgar and sweet, and her improvised lines, including the famous story about the two men in the hotel room, became legendary. Best in Show was a critical success, and O’Hara’s performance was praised as one of the best in the film.
O’Hara continued with Guest in A Mighty Wind in 2003, in which she played Mickey Crabbe, a folk singer in a reunited trio, and in For Your Consideration in 2006, in which she played Marilyn Hack, an actress who believes she is about to be nominated for an Oscar. The Guest films were made with a regular company of actors, including Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Parker Posey, and Michael McKean, and the improvised style meant that each film was a new challenge, with the actors creating their characters from scratch. O’Hara’s work in these films is among the finest of her career, because the improvisation allowed her to use all of her Second City skills, and the characters she created, Cookie Fleck above all, are among the most memorable in modern comedy. The films were not commercial blockbusters, but they were critical successes, and they kept O’Hara’s reputation as a comedian’s comedian intact. The Guest years were a creative high point, and they showed that O’Hara, in her forties and fifties, was still at the top of her game.
The Christopher Guest films also deepened O’Hara’s partnership with Eugene Levy, which had begun at Second City in the 1970s and which would become the defining collaboration of both their careers. Levy and O’Hara had a comic chemistry that was based on trust, on shared timing, and on a willingness to let the other be funny, and their scenes together, in Best in Show and in the later Schitt’s Creek, are among the best in their filmographies. The Guest films were a reminder that O’Hara’s talent was not only for scripted comedy but for improvisation, and that her best work often came when she was given freedom to create. The films’ influence on comedy, with their mockumentary style and their improvised dialogue, can be seen in later shows such as The Office and Parks and Recreation, and O’Hara’s contribution to that influence is significant. The Guest years were the bridge between SCTV and Schitt’s Creek, and they kept O’Hara working at a high level while the wider world was not paying attention.
Christopher Guest and the Mockumentary Years
Schitt’s Creek, which premiered in 2015, was created by Eugene Levy and his son Dan Levy, and it starred O’Hara as Moira Rose, a former soap opera star who, with her husband Johnny, played by Eugene Levy, loses her fortune and is forced to live in a small town she once bought as a joke. Moira Rose became one of the most famous characters in recent television: a woman with a vast, affected vocabulary, a wardrobe of black-and-white outfits and wigs, and a complete inability to accept her new circumstances, played by O’Hara with a commitment that made the character both ridiculous and deeply human. The show ran for six seasons, from 2015 to 2020, and it grew from a small Canadian series to a global hit, winning nine Emmy Awards in its final season, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actress for O’Hara. The role made O’Hara famous to a new generation, and Moira’s catchphrases, her accent, and her wigs became part of popular culture. The second act had arrived, and it was bigger than the first.
Moira Rose is a character that could have been a caricature, but O’Hara played her with a depth that made her more than a joke, because Moira’s pretensions are a defence against a world that has taken everything from her, and her love for her family, however strangely expressed, is real. The show’s writing, by Dan Levy, gave Moira some of the best lines in television, and O’Hara’s delivery, with her invented accent, her dramatic pauses, and her physical comedy, made those lines unforgettable. The series’ final season, in which Moira’s career revives and the family finds a new kind of happiness, was a fitting end to the story, and O’Hara’s Emmy win for the role, at the age of sixty-six, was a long-overdue recognition. The show’s success also changed O’Hara’s career, bringing her new roles, new fans, and a level of fame she had never experienced, even at the height of SCTV. Moira Rose is now the role that most people associate with O’Hara, and it is a worthy one, because it shows everything she can do: comedy, drama, character work, and heart.
The impact of Schitt’s Creek went beyond awards, because the show’s warmth, its humour, and its portrayal of a family that loves each other despite their flaws made it a comfort to millions of viewers, particularly during the pandemic, when the show’s final season aired. O’Hara’s Moira became a gay icon, a fashion icon, and a symbol of resilience, and her performance was praised by critics and by fellow actors as one of the great comic performances in television history. The show’s success also proved that a Canadian series, made on a modest budget, could become a global hit, and that a comedian in her sixties could become a star. O’Hara has spoken about the role with gratitude, and about the joy of working with Eugene and Dan Levy, a family she has known for fifty years. Schitt’s Creek is the second act that every actor dreams of, and O’Hara’s performance in it is the reason the show is remembered.
Schitt’s Creek: Moira Rose and the Second Act
After Schitt’s Creek, O’Hara took on new roles that showed her range, including a part in the HBO series The Last of Us in 2025, in which she played Gail, a therapist in the post-apocalyptic world, in the show’s second season. The role was a dramatic one, very different from Moira Rose, and it showed that O’Hara could play a serious, grounded character as well as a comic one. She also appeared in the film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in 2024, returning as Delia Deetz, thirty-six years after the original film, in a sequel directed by Tim Burton that brought back Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and O’Hara. The sequel was a commercial success, and O’Hara’s return as Delia, now a famous artist, was a highlight, showing that the character, and the actress, had lost none of their comic power. The role was a fitting bookend to her film career, bringing her back to the character that had made her a film star in 1988.
O’Hara’s recent work also includes voice roles, guest appearances, and a continued presence in comedy, with her distinctive voice and her comic timing making her a sought-after performer. She has won awards including the Emmy for Schitt’s Creek, a Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Awards, and she has been honoured in Canada with a star on the Walk of Fame and with the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award. Her marriage to the production designer Bo Welch, whom she married in 1992, and her two sons, Matthew and Luke, have been a stable part of her life, away from the spotlight, and O’Hara has spoken about the importance of family in sustaining a long career. She lives in Los Angeles, works in Canada and the United States, and continues to choose roles that interest her, whether they are comic or dramatic. The comedian who began in Toronto’s Second City is still working, still funny, and still surprising audiences.
Today Catherine O’Hara is one of the most respected comedians in the world, with a career that spans nearly fifty years, from SCTV to Schitt’s Creek, from Beetlejuice to The Last of Us, and with a reputation for intelligence, versatility, and a comic gift that has never faded. Her characters, Lola Heatherton, Delia Deetz, Kate McCallister, Cookie Fleck, and Moira Rose, are part of the shared memory of comedy, and her influence on younger comedians, particularly women, is significant. She has shown that a comedian can have a long career, that a second act is possible, and that the best work can come late, when the performer has the experience to make it count. The girl from Toronto who made her siblings laugh at the dinner table became a comedian whose characters are quoted around the world, and whose work will be watched for decades to come. Catherine O’Hara’s story is still being written, and its next chapter is likely to be as funny as the ones that came before.
My Take:
Moira Rose is the greatest comic character of the last decade, and Catherine O’Hara’s performance is the reason why, because Moira is a character who should not work and who works perfectly. She speaks in an invented accent, uses words that no one else uses, wears wigs and outfits that belong in a different world, and believes she is a great actress despite all evidence to the contrary, and yet the audience loves her, because O’Hara plays her with a complete, unwavering commitment. The genius of the performance is that Moira never winks at the audience, never acknowledges that she is ridiculous, and that sincerity makes her funny in a way that a self-aware performance never could be. The show’s best scenes are the ones in which Moira is at her most delusional, and O’Hara’s delivery, with its pauses, its emphasis, and its physicality, turns a line that would be merely clever on the page into something unforgettable. Moira Rose is a masterpiece, and O’Hara is the artist.
Cookie Fleck, from Best in Show, is the character that shows O’Hara at her most fearless, because Cookie is a woman with a past that she is not ashamed of, and O’Hara plays her with a vulgarity and a warmth that are both completely convincing. The film’s dog show setting is a perfect frame for Cookie, because the world of competitive dog showing is itself absurd, and Cookie’s stories, particularly the famous anecdote about the two men in the hotel room, are delivered with a deadpan that makes them funnier with each telling. What I love most about the performance is its generosity: O’Hara never judges Cookie, never makes her the butt of the joke, but lets the audience laugh with her rather than at her. The scenes with Eugene Levy, as her husband, are among the best in the film, because the two actors have a chemistry that comes from fifty years of working together, and their timing is perfect. Cookie Fleck is a great comic character, and O’Hara’s performance is the reason the film is still quoted.
Delia Deetz, from Beetlejuice, is a character that could have been a simple villain, but O’Hara makes her into something more interesting: a pretentious artist who is also, in her own way, sympathetic. Delia believes she is a great sculptor, and her sculptures, which are grotesque and unsettling, are a perfect visual joke, but O’Hara plays her with a seriousness that makes the comedy work, because Delia never doubts herself. The film’s best moments with Delia are the ones in which she reacts to the supernatural, with horror, with confusion, and with a determination to carry on as if nothing strange is happening, and O’Hara’s physical comedy in those scenes is superb. The return as Delia in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in 2024, thirty-six years later, showed that the character had not lost her power, and that O’Hara could still play her with the same energy. Delia Deetz is a reminder that O’Hara’s talent for playing delusional women began long before Moira Rose, and that the two characters are sisters.
Kate McCallister, from Home Alone, is the role that made O’Hara famous to a mass audience, and it deserves more respect than it usually gets, because Kate is the emotional centre of the film, and O’Hara’s performance gives the comedy its heart. The scene on the plane, in which Kate realises she has left Kevin at home, is played with a panic that is both funny and real, and the journey that follows, by plane, by train, and by van with a polka band, is a series of comic set pieces that O’Hara carries with energy and warmth. What makes the performance work is that Kate’s love for Kevin is never in doubt, and O’Hara plays that love without sentimentality, as a mother’s fierce, slightly frantic determination to get home. The film is watched every Christmas by millions of families, and Kate McCallister is part of that tradition, a character who is both funny and moving. Home Alone is a great comedy, and O’Hara’s Kate is one of the reasons why.
Lola Heatherton, from SCTV, is the character that shows O’Hara’s range as a young comedian, because Lola is a Las Vegas lounge singer who believes she is a star, and O’Hara plays her with a voice, a walk, and a wardrobe that are all slightly wrong in exactly the right way. The character is a parody of a certain kind of show-business delusion, and O’Hara’s performance is both affectionate and sharp, because she clearly loves the singers she is parodying even as she mocks them. SCTV’s style, with its long sketches and its character-driven humour, suited O’Hara perfectly, and Lola is the best example of what she could do in that format. The character’s songs, her banter with the audience, and her complete confidence in her own talent are all funny, and they show a comedian who was already fully formed in her twenties. Lola Heatherton is a cult favourite, and she deserves to be remembered alongside Moira Rose as one of O’Hara’s great creations.
SCTV as a show deserves more attention than it gets, because it was one of the greatest sketch shows in television history, and O’Hara was one of its most important members. The cast, which included John Candy, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, and Andrea Martin, was a group of comedians who would dominate film and television for the next forty years, and the show’s writing, which won Emmy Awards, was sharp, satirical, and character-driven. O’Hara’s contributions, both as a performer and as a writer, were central to the show’s success, and her characters, Lola Heatherton and Dusty Towne among them, are still remembered by comedy fans. The show’s influence can be seen in later sketch shows, and its cast’s later work, from Ghostbusters to Schitt’s Creek, is a measure of its importance. SCTV is not as famous as Saturday Night Live, but it was, in many ways, a better show, and O’Hara’s work on it is a major part of her legacy.
The Last of Us, in which O’Hara played Gail in 2025, is a role that shows a different side of her, because Gail is a therapist in a post-apocalyptic world, a serious, grounded character who is very different from Moira Rose. The role required O’Hara to play drama rather than comedy, and her performance, with its quiet, thoughtful delivery, showed that she could hold her own in one of the most acclaimed dramas on television. The casting was a surprise to many viewers, who knew O’Hara only as a comedian, but it was a smart choice, because her stage training and her experience with character work made her well suited to a dramatic role. The performance was praised by critics, and it showed that O’Hara, in her seventies, was still taking on new challenges. The Last of Us is a reminder that a great comedian is also a great actor, and that O’Hara’s talent is not limited to making people laugh.
Waiting for Guffman is the Christopher Guest film that best shows O’Hara’s improvisational talent, because her character, Sheila Albertson, is a travel agent who is part of a small-town theatre production, and the film’s improvised style required O’Hara to create the character from scratch. Her scenes, in which Sheila tries to be helpful and ends up being absurd, are funny because they feel real, as if the audience is watching a real person rather than an actor. The film’s mockumentary format, with its interviews and its behind-the-scenes footage, suited O’Hara’s Second City training, and her performance is a masterclass in how to build a character from a single detail. Waiting for Guffman was a critical success, and it began a collaboration with Guest that would produce some of the best comedies of the era. The film is a useful introduction to O’Hara’s work, because it shows her at her most natural, creating comedy from observation rather than from a script.
O’Hara’s voice work, particularly as Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a part of her career that deserves a mention, because Sally is a character who is both sad and hopeful, and O’Hara’s voice gives her a warmth that the animation alone could not provide. The film, directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton, has become a cult favourite, watched every Halloween and Christmas, and Sally is one of its most beloved characters. O’Hara’s voice performance, with its gentle, slightly melancholic tone, is perfect for a rag doll who longs to be loved, and the character’s songs, including Sally’s Song, are among the film’s most moving. The role shows that O’Hara’s talent is not only in her face and her body but in her voice, and that she can create a character with sound alone. A viewer who only knows her from live action should hear Sally, because it is a different kind of performance, and it is a beautiful one.
The partnership with Eugene Levy is the great collaboration of O’Hara’s career, and it is worth celebrating, because it has lasted for fifty years, from Second City in the 1970s to Schitt’s Creek in the 2020s, and it has produced some of the best comedy in television and film. Levy and O’Hara have a chemistry that is based on trust, on shared timing, and on a willingness to let the other be funny, and their scenes together, whether as Cookie and Wally Fleck in Best in Show or as Moira and Johnny Rose in Schitt’s Creek, are among the best in their filmographies. The partnership works because the two actors are different: Levy is understated and deadpan, O’Hara is flamboyant and expressive, and the contrast makes them funnier together than either is alone. The longevity of the partnership is rare in comedy, and it is a testament to the friendship and the mutual respect that underlie it. O’Hara and Levy are a great comic pair, and their work together is a major part of both their legacies.
My honest assessment is that Catherine O’Hara is one of the greatest comedians of her generation, and that her career is a model of how to build a lasting body of work through versatility, patience, and a willingness to wait for the right role. Her strength is her character work: she creates people who are fully realised, funny, and human, and she commits to them completely, whether the character is a lounge singer, a sculptor, a mother, or a soap opera star. Her weakness, if it can be called one, is that she has rarely been given a leading film role, and her best work has been on television and in ensemble films rather than as a solo star. That is not her fault; it is a reflection of an industry that has been slow to give women comedians leading roles. Her legacy will be Moira Rose, Cookie Fleck, and Delia Deetz, and the doors she opened for the comedians who came after her. She changed what was possible, and she did it by being funny, consistently, for fifty years.
If a new viewer wants to approach O’Hara, the order is straightforward: start with Schitt’s Creek for Moira Rose, then watch Best in Show for Cookie Fleck, then Home Alone for Kate McCallister, and then Beetlejuice for Delia Deetz. SCTV clips will show the young comedian, and The Nightmare Before Christmas will show her voice work. The Last of Us will show the dramatic actor, and the Christopher Guest films will show the improviser. The order matters, because it shows the arc from a young sketch comedian to a television star to a dramatic actor, and it avoids the temptation to judge her by a single role. O’Hara’s career is a long one, and it repays patience, because each role adds a layer to the last, and the whole is a portrait of a comedian who has never stopped being funny. She is one of the best, and her best is still coming.
One final point about O’Hara is that her Canadian identity matters, because she is a Canadian comedian who became a star in the United States without ever pretending to be American, and her work on SCTV and Schitt’s Creek is Canadian in its sensibility, even when it is set in the United States. Canadian comedy has a tradition of character work, of satire, and of a certain gentleness, and O’Hara’s performances carry that tradition, even in her most flamboyant roles. Her honours in Canada, including the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, recognise that, and her continued work in Canadian productions shows that she has never left home behind. She is a Canadian star, and Canada is proud of her, with good reason.
O’Hara’s fashion sense, particularly as Moira Rose, deserves a last word, because the character’s wardrobe, with its black-and-white outfits, its wigs, and its dramatic silhouettes, became a fashion phenomenon, and O’Hara’s commitment to the look was part of the performance. The costumes were designed to be both ridiculous and beautiful, and O’Hara wore them with a confidence that made them work, turning a joke about a former soap star into a style statement. The fashion world noticed, and Moira’s looks were discussed in magazines and on social media, with fans recreating them for Halloween. A comedian who can make a costume into a character is a comedian who understands visual comedy, and O’Hara’s Moira is a masterclass in it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where was Catherine O’Hara born?
Catherine O’Hara was born on 4 March 1954 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was the sixth of seven children in a large Irish Catholic family, and she began her comedy career at Toronto’s Second City theatre.
What was SCTV?
SCTV, or Second City Television, was a sketch comedy show that ran from 1976 to 1984, featuring Catherine O’Hara, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, and Andrea Martin. O’Hara’s characters included the lounge singer Lola Heatherton, and the show won Emmy Awards for its writing.
Who did Catherine O’Hara play in Home Alone?
She played Kate McCallister, the mother of Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, in Home Alone, released in 1990, and in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York in 1992. Kate realises on a flight to Paris that she has left Kevin at home and tries frantically to get back to him.
Who is Moira Rose?
Moira Rose is the character Catherine O’Hara played in Schitt’s Creek, which ran from 2015 to 2020. Moira is a former soap opera star who loses her fortune and moves to a small town, and O’Hara won an Emmy Award for the role in 2020.
Did Catherine O’Hara appear in Beetlejuice?
Yes. She played Delia Deetz, the pretentious artist stepmother, in Beetlejuice, released in 1988 and directed by Tim Burton. She returned as Delia in the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in 2024.
What role did Catherine O’Hara play in The Last of Us?
She played Gail, a therapist, in the second season of the HBO series The Last of Us in 2025. The dramatic role showed a different side of O’Hara from her famous comic characters such as Moira Rose.
