Catherine O’Hara, known for ‘KEVIN!’ moment and Moira Rose, dies at 71

Catherine O’Hara, the Emmy-winning actress celebrated for roles ranging from the mother in Home Alone to Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek, died at the age of 71 on Friday, the appraisal says. She was already comedy royalty in Canada before becoming known worldwide after the 1990 blockbuster Home Alone, where her wide-eyed, zoomed-in cry of “KEVIN!” became an instantly identifiable pop-culture moment, the piece notes.

O’Hara began with the improv troupe Second City in Toronto and on the show SCTV, helping define an era of Canadian comedy alongside Martin Short, John Candy and Eugene Levy. The appraisal says she often played a particular type of manic, upper-class female artist: famous or wealthy, exiled, narcissistic and oblivious to the real world.

Examples include Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice (1988), an eccentric stepmother who invites the supernatural and declares, “I will go insane and I will take you with me,” and Moira Rose, the socialite and former soap-opera actress on Schitt’s Creek, a role that earned her a first acting Emmy.

The appraisal adds that even in a recent, underused part as a former studio head on Apple TV’s The Studio, O’Hara supplied megalomaniacal chaos and Hollywood-style resentment. It says she could make pretentious, self-involved characters appealing through practiced excess: a preening tone, perilously raised eyebrows, deranged fake smiles and explosive shrieks.

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