Catherine O\u2019Hara<\/a> was never afraid to go big. The wild accent as Moira Rose on \u201cSchitt\u2019s Creek.\u201d<\/a> Delia Deetz\u2019s possessed dance to \u201cDay-O (The Banana Boat Song)\u201d in \u201cBeetlejuice.\u201d The way she screamed \u201cKEVIN!\u201d in two \u201cHome Alones\u201d as Kate McCallister.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t boldness alone that made her one of the greats, and her characters memorable: No matter how absurd or how preposterous or even cliche on the page, there was always a beating heart underneath the silliness, a compassion that shone through. Yes, even as Cookie Fleck, with all her ex-boyfriends, in \u201cBest in Show.\u201d<\/p>\n Kevin Nealon<\/a> said it simply: \u201cShe changed how so many of us understand comedy and humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n Because of that innate grasp on her craft, unwillingness to settle into nostalgia and uncanny ability to invent herself anew with each project, her characters would impact multiple generations of film, television and comedy fans. Before she died at age 71, she was still forging new trails as the ousted studio executive Patty Leigh in \u201cThe Studio.\u201d<\/a> And she did it all with grace and humility, a diva only when the role and costume demanded it.<\/p>\n As fellow Canadian Sarah Polley, who she acted with on \u201cThe Studio,\u201d wrote on Instagram Friday: \u201cShe was the kindest and the classiest. How could she also have been the funniest person in the world?\u201d<\/p>\n Just eight years younger than another comedy trailblazer Gilda Radner<\/a>, whom she understudied for at \u201cThe Second City\u201d in Toronto, O\u2019Hara was not an obvious candidate for stardom as the second youngest of seven in a decidedly non-showbiz, Catholic family. But she loved comedy, obsessing over \u201cMonty Python\u201d in high school and even trying to meet them at the airport once after hearing they were flying in. And when her brother began dating Radner, she followed that trail to the improv stage.<\/p>\n Her first job was not on stage, however, but as a server where she absorbed all that she could. Though she was turned down after her first audition, she wasn\u2019t deterred; She joined the company in 1974. By 1976 she was an essential part of the cast\u2019s transition to television on \u201cSCTV,\u201d where she did original characters and impersonated well-known personalities of the time, including Meryl Streep<\/a>, who she\u2019d later act alongside.<\/p>\n \u201cMy crutch was, in improvs, when in doubt, play insane,\u201d O\u2019Hara told The New Yorker in 2019. \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to excuse anything that came out of your mouth. It didn\u2019t have to make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n By the time the show ended in 1984, she was itching for something more, something deeper and started reading scripts for films. Some equated her pickiness (including pulling out of \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d) with a kind of lack of ambition. For her, it was about waiting for the right thing. Though her film debut was less than auspicious (in the poorly reviewed Canadian thriller \u201cDouble Negative\u201d alongside \u201cSCTV\u201d peers like John Candy and Eugene Levy) she soon found her footing working with the likes of Martin Scorsese in \u201cAfter Hours\u201d and Mike Nichols in \u201cHeartburn,\u201d where she\u2019d play the gossipy beltway journalist friend of Streep and Jack Nicholson.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to try to make this person a real person,\u201d she said in a 1986 celebrity.land interview. \u201cWhen I first read it, I thought oh this woman does nothing but gossip. But then I started seeing her as a human being, like myself.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s an impulse that served her well during her Hollywood ascent in the late 1980s and early 1990s. You can watch \u201cHome Alone\u201d for the hijinks, but O\u2019Hara made it emotional and grounded as the mom just trying to get back to her child. There was humor, yes (remember the fake Rolex?) but then, a beat later, there were tears. Even Delia Deetz was relatable, giving her husband a withering glare at his tone-deaf suggestion that she might now be able to make a decent meal in her new suburban prison.<\/p>\n