Catherine O Hara legendary comedian and Schitt s Creek star dies at 71

Oh man, this is tough. She made audiences laugh for more than five decades. Catherine O'Hara, star of films like Beetlejuice, Home Alone, and of course Schitt's Creek, died Friday at the age of 71 after what's being described as a short illness. Her death coming as a shock to so many of us is sparking an outpouring of tributes from Hollywood and beyond. We'll have more on those in a moment, but first, Bradley Blackburn has a look back at her hilarious and acclaimed career. She was an actress who practically jumped off screen. Catherine O'Hara, who played Kevin's mom in the Home Alone films, designer Delia Dietz in Beetlejuice, and Moira Rose in the hit series Schitt's Creek. That role earned her an Emmy for Best Actress in a Comedy in 2020. O'Hara was born in Canada. She got her start with the Second City in Toronto and was a founding member of SCTV. Gee, I don't know. It's where she first worked with longtime collaborator Eugene Levy. Long before Schitt's Creek, they helped popularize the mockumentary form in films like Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. She was very popular back then. She had dozens of boyfriends. Hundreds. Hundreds. Yeah, hundreds. She was also a writer, explaining to CBS in the 90s it came in part from necessity. Pretty frustrating to just be a regular sort of actress waiting around, you know, for someone else to write you something or to somehow get an opportunity to do a good script. O'Hara appeared in dozens of works, not all of them comedies. The voice of Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas and last year, a dramatic turn in HBO's The Last of Us. Let's try something different. That earned her an Emmy nomination, and so did another role as a film executive who climbed to the top of Hollywood in the studio. They're influencers. Most of them don't even go inside. They just make their red carpet TikToks and leave. An unconventional, captivating star who's now left us, but will keep making us laugh. My answer is a yes. A clangorous, vociferous yes. For CBS Saturday morning, Bradley Blackburn, New York. Oh, it's still so hard to believe this really hit us all hard yesterday. There she is with Macaulay Culkin, of course, her co-star from Home Alone 1 and 2. He wrote on Instagram paying tribute to her saying, quote, Mama, I thought we had time. I wanted more. I know when I read that, I was just like, oh, gosh. And of course, Christopher Guest, who collaborated with O'Hara on those mockumentaries like Best in Show said in a statement, we have lost one of the comic giants of our age. It's so true. I mean, think about her range in all of these big roles, right? Home Alone, Beetlejuice, Schitt's Creek, my favorite. I still haven't finished watching Schitt's Creek, so I'm glad to be able to watch a little bit more of her. But she just spanned such a wide range and was incredible. One of the directors that worked with her I was reading said that people didn't realize that she really was next level in terms of her performances. Like when she came, she brought everybody up. And I let you know, Dan Levy, or Levy rather, Eugene Levy's son, who was in Schitt's Creek with her said that she was extended family before they even played real family. So it speaks to her as a person. Yeah, because his dad, Eugene, collaborated with her all those years.