Catherine O'Hara

Actor

• Born: March 4, 1954
• Place of Birth: Toronto, Canada

Contribution: Catherine O’Hara is an Emmy Award–winning Canadian American actor, comedian, and writer best known for her roles in the comedies Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), For Your Consideration (2006), and Schitt’s Creek (2015–20).

Background

Catherine Anne O’Hara was born on March 4, 1954, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As a young woman, she had dreams of becoming a comedic actor, and in 1974 she joined the Second City, an improv comedy group that originated in Chicago and has a branch in Toronto.

After working with the group until 1976, O’Hara joined its newly created sketch comedy show, Second City Television, or SCTV (1976–81). Performing with her in the show’s first season were fellow Canadian actors John Candy and Eugene Levy, who would both go on to mainstream comedy success in the United States. The show met with positive critical reviews, and O’Hara’s career was soon under way.

O’Hara set herself apart from the rest of the SCTV cast with her skillful impersonations, and her segments became popular portions of the show. She soon became a writer of the show’s sketches, a skill she would develop over the next several years until she left in 1979.

Career

In 1980 O’Hara made her feature-film debut in the mystery Double Negative (alternatively titled Deadly Companion) with her former SCTV costars John Candy and Eugene Levy. The following year, she joined the cast of SCTV Network 90 (later just SCTV Network, 1981–83), a continuation of the original SCTV series. In addition to starring with most of her former cast members, she took an active role in writing the show’s sketches, and in 1982 O’Hara and the rest of the team were nominated for Emmy Awards for outstanding writing in a variety or music program for three of the show’s episodes. The team won one Emmy for an episode titled “Moral Majority Show.”

O’Hara left SCTV Network in 1982 and began auditioning for small parts in television and feature films. After appearing in several episodes of The New Show (1984) and the SCTV Network follow-up SCTV Channel (1983–84) and in the television movie The Last Polka (1985), she played supporting roles in the 1985 comedy After Hours, the 1986 drama Heartburn, and the 1988 hit comedy Beetlejuice. She also voiced the role of Miss Malone in the animated 1988 series The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, a cartoon adaptation of Martin Short’s famous sketch character.

In 1990 O’Hara played supporting roles in two major blockbuster films, the action movie Dick Tracy and the comedy Home Alone. In Home Alone O’Hara portrays Kate McCallister, the mother of Kevin, a child accidentally left behind while his family goes on vacation. Home Alone became the highest-grossing comedy film at the time and spawned a sequel two years later. Much of the original cast, including O’Hara, reprised their roles for the sequel.

O’Hara next voiced the characters of Sally and Shock in Tim Burton’s 1993 stop-motion film The Nightmare before Christmas. Between working various odd jobs on television, she stayed active for the rest of the 1990s in small roles in films such as Wyatt Earp (1994), Pippi Longstocking (1997), and Home Fries (1998).

O’Hara worked with actor and writer-director Christopher Guest for the first time in the 1996 mockumentary comedy film Waiting for Guffman. The film’s dialogue was almost entirely improvised, and O’Hara’s acclaimed performance in the film led to several other collaborations with Guest. In 2000 she starred in his comedy Best in Show, shot in the same improv style as Guffman. Guest released A Mighty Wind, another fake documentary about folk bands who stage a reunion show, in 2003.

After playing Justice Strauss in the 2004 film Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, O’Hara voiced roles in three animated films, Chicken Little (2005), Over the Hedge (2006), and Monster House (2006). She acted in several episodes of the HBO drama Six Feet Under in 2003 and 2005 and then reunited with Guest in 2006 to star in For Your Consideration, an improvised comedy about actors during awards season. The film was a great success, and O’Hara won multiple awards and nominations for her performance.

Back on television, O’Hara guest starred in a 2009 episode of the popular HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and then appeared in the 2010 HBO biopic Temple Grandin, playing the aunt of Grandin, a scientist known for revolutionizing the treatment of livestock on farms. For her performance, O’Hara was nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding supporting actress in a miniseries or movie.

Also in 2009, O’Hara began performing a prominent voice role on the Nick at Nite stop-motion series Glenn Martin, DDS. She remained with the show until it ended in 2011. After voicing multiple roles in Tim Burton’s animated film Frankenweenie (2012), O’Hara appeared in the comedy film A.C.O.D. (2013), about adult children of divorce.

During the mid-to-late 2010s, O’Hara appeared in a number of television series, including Modern Family (2015), Skylanders Academy (2016–18), and A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017–18). Her most notable role of this time, however, is that of Moira Rose, one half of a formerly wealthy married couple whose financial woes have forced their family to move from the city to the small town of Schitt’s Creek on the comedy Schitt’s Creek. She and Eugene Levy, who plays her husband, Johnny Rose, on the show, had previously collaborated on other projects and have developed a deep comedic chemistry. The two actors both earned 2019 Emmy Award nominations for best lead actress in a comedy and best actor in a comedy, respectively, for their work on the show. O'Hara won the award in 2020, followed by the Golden Globe award in the same category in 2021. Between 2016 and 2020, O’Hara also won five Canadian Screen Awards for her performance as the lead actress on the show.

O'Hara's next projects included lending her voice to the animated series The Last Kids on Earth (2019–21), as well as to the animated comedy films The Addams Family (2019) and Extinct (2021). She had roles in several films and shows between 2021 and 2023, including voice-acting appearances in the short film Back Home Again (2021) and an episode of the series Central Park (2022). She also voiced the character of Brook in the animated hit Elemental in 2023. In 2024, she reprised one of her most famous roles as Delia in the Beetlejuice sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

Impact

O’Hara has honed her unique and valuable skills of improvisational comedy over her more than forty-year career. She can deliver outrageous and perfectly timed lines while keeping a deadpan expression—a talent that has solidified the comedy-veteran status of this powerful leading and supporting actor.

Personal Life

O’Hara married production designer Bo Welch in 1992. They have two sons, Dylan and Matthew.

Bibliography

"Catherine O'Hara." IMDb, www.imdb.com/name/nm0001573/. Accessed 17 September 2024.

Goldberg, Lesley. “Catherine O’Hara to Star in Fox’s To My Future Assistant.” Hollywood Reporter. Hollywood Reporter, 19 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 Aug. 2013.

Guest, Christopher, et al. “Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Harry Shearer, and Parker Posey: Consider This.” Interview by Jay S. Jacobs. PopEntertainment.com. PopEntertainment.com, 17 Nov. 2006. Web. 19 Aug. 2013.

O’Hara, Catherine. “Catherine O’Hara Discusses the Oscar Nominee Frankenweenie.” Interview by Barbara Chai. Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones, 11 Jan. 2013. Web. 19 Aug. 2013.

O’Hara, Catherine. “The Once and Future Queen of Comedy.” Interview by Michael Sragow. Salon. Salon Media, 28 Sept. 2000. Web. 19 Aug. 2013.

Remington, Alex. “‘The Funniest Woman in the World’: Catherine O’Hara.” Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 24 Oct. 2007. Web. 19 Aug. 2013.