{"id":2259282,"date":"2026-01-31T04:12:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T04:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2259282"},"modified":"2026-01-31T04:12:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T04:12:20","slug":"appreciation-catherine-ohara-was-an-onscreen-benediction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/appreciation-catherine-ohara-was-an-onscreen-benediction\/","title":{"rendered":"Appreciation: Catherine O’Hara was an onscreen benediction"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It is painful to have to write about Catherine O\u2019Hara, so alive and lively a presence, in the past tense. O\u2019Hara has lived inside my head \u2014 is it too corny to say my heart? \u2014 from \u201cSCTV\u201d to \u201cSchitt\u2019s Creek\u201d<\/a> to \u201cThe Studio,\u201d<\/a> on whose second season she was scheduled to start work, when she died, Friday at 71.<\/p>\n

Any appearance constituted a recommendation for \u2014 a benediction upon \u2014 whatever she was appearing in; you felt she would only say yes to things that used her well, that sounded fun or interesting, and that her casting reflected well on the project and people who cast her. I think of her not as a careerist, but a Canadian. Of joining \u201cSchitt\u2019s Creek,\u201d she said when I interviewed her in 2015<\/a>, \u201cit took me a few moments to commit, [but] I already trusted [co-creator, co-star] Eugene [Levy] as a writer and an actor, and as a good man who I could stand to spend time with.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is how it began for her<\/a>, in Toronto, where her brother Marcus was dating Gilda Radner, who was in \u201cGodspell\u201d with Levy and Martin Short. \u201cAnd it was really watching Gilda when I realized, \u2018cause I\u2019d always liked acting in school, that it was actually a local possibility. And then she got into Second City theater, and I was a waitress there \u2014 it\u2019s like I stalked her \u2014 and then she did the show for a while and then took on a job for the National Lampoon. So I got to understudy or take her place \u2014 I got to join the cast, and Eugene was in it. It was really just the luck of having a professional actor suddenly in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an \u201cSCTV\u201d early adopter<\/a>, O\u2019Hara was first attractive to me because she was funny, but she was also beautiful \u2014 a beauty she could subvert by a subtle or broad rearrangement of her features. Though fundamentally a comic actress, her characters could feel pained or tragic beneath the surface \u2014 even Lola Heatherton, one of her signature \u201cSCTV\u201d characters, an over-exuberant spangled entertainer (\u201cI love you! I want to have your babies!\u201d was a catch phrase) is built on desperation. Among many, many other parts, she played a teenaged Brooke Shields singing Devo\u2019s \u201cWhip It!,\u201d Katherine Hepburn, a depressed Ingmar Bergman character, and, most memorably, chirpy teenage quiz show contestant Margaret Meehan, buzzing in with answers before the questions are asked, and growing tearfully undone as the host (Levy) becomes increasingly angry.<\/p>\n

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