A Love Letter to Laughter: Remembering Catherine O’Hara (1954–2026)

There are performers who make you laugh, and then there are performers who make laughter feel like home. Catherine O’Hara belonged to the second kind—a once-in-a-generation artist who could turn a single look, a perfectly placed pause, or a delightfully strange pronunciation into something that lived in your memory for years. On January 30, 2026, O’Hara died at 71 in Los Angeles after a brief illness, according to reports from her representatives. She is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, and their two sons.

To call her “beloved” feels almost too small—because she didn’t just play characters we adored; she helped build the emotional furniture of so many people’s lives. For one generation, she’ll always be the fierce, frantic, tender mom in Home Alone, a reminder that love can be panicked, funny, and relentless all at once. For another, she’s the comedic sorceress who reinvented what a sitcom performance could be as Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek—a role that earned her an Emmy and introduced her genius to millions of new fans. That fearlessness followed her everywhere. In films like Beetlejuice, she could be wonderfully weird without ever losing the thread of truth underneath the comedy

If you’re looking for a way to honor her, the answer is wonderfully simple: watch her. Rewatch the moments that made you laugh until you cried. Introduce her work to someone who’s never seen it. Say her lines out loud. Let her comedy do what it always did—make life feel a little lighter, a little kinder, a little more survivable.

Because even in grief, Catherine O’Hara leaves us something warm to hold onto: the sound of joy, and the memory of how generously she shared it.