Catherine O'Hara dies at 71 — SNL honored her and she had hosted twice

Catherine O'Hara died Jan. 30 at age 71 at her Los Angeles home, and Saturday Night Live honored the late comedy star with a tribute card during Alexander Skarsgård's Jan. 31 episode, NBC Insider reported. O'Hara was best known for roles in films including Best in Show, Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Home Alone, and for TV series such as Schitt's Creek and SCTV.

Online tributes from former co-stars and longtime admirers began pouring in after news of her death. O'Hara hosted SNL twice: Season 16, Episode 17 on April 13, 1991, when Home Alone remained in the box office top 10, and the show's Halloween episode in Season 18, about two weeks before Home Alone 2 hit theaters.

Her SNL work included a monologue in which she improvised a song about the book Presumed Innocent "in the foreign language of Canadian," an arrow-through-the-head Halloween gag, and a Nanny Greenwood sketch. Although O'Hara was hired as an SNL cast member for Season 6, she left before performing to return to SCTV.

She told People in 2024 that SCTV had been inconsistent with breaks and returns, and that when SCTV was picked up again she said, "Oh, sorry, I gotta go be with my family." She also acknowledged regret, saying, "Yeah, not cool to take a job and leave it, you know what I mean?" In a 2013 interview with Marc Maron she said she "lasted about a week and a half" during that stint.

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