Catherine O’Hara’s Top 5 Iconic Film and Television Performances, Ranked

Reflecting on O’Hara’s illustrious career, it’s challenging to select her “best” performances, as her filmography is replete with standout roles. While any project featuring O’Hara is a testament to her talent, this selection offers a glimpse into her most memorable work. Each performance is noteworthy, deserving of endless replays. Honorable mentions include her recent work in “The Studio,” collaborations with Christopher Guest in “For Your Consideration” and “A Mighty Wind,” and her voice role in “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Here, we celebrate Catherine O’Hara’s finest contributions to film and television, acknowledging that each is extraordinary in its own right.

Among her iconic roles is that of Kate McAllister in the holiday classic “Home Alone.” Despite its placement lower on this list, largely due to her supporting role status, O’Hara’s portrayal of Kevin McAllister’s frantic mother is unforgettable. The film, directed by Chris Columbus, features O’Hara as a mother desperately trying to reunite with her son, Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, after he is accidentally left behind during a family trip to Paris. Her comedic genius shines through in moments of panic and determination, particularly when she realizes mid-flight that Kevin is missing and later hitches a ride with a polka band to return home. O’Hara reprised this beloved role in the sequel, “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”

The only reason that “Home Alone,” the beloved Christmas movie helmed by Chris Columbus which stars Macauley Culkin as Kevin McAllister, is at the bottom of this list is because Catherine O’Hara is not the star of “Home Alone.” O’Hara plays a pivotal but somewhat small supporting role as Kevin’s mom Kate McAllister, who’s trying to corral her entire family so that they can enjoy a Christmas abroad in Paris. After Kevin causes a huge problem at dinner the night before they’re set to leave, he gets stuck in the attic and a power outage means the McAllister clan oversleeps; in their rush to get to the Chicago airport to make their flight, they leave Kevin behind.

O’Hara’s role in “Home Alone” is mostly to place frantic calls home and try to figure out if her son is alive and well (he is, and he’s outsmarting burglars played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern at every turn). The funniest thing O’Hara does is figure out, mid-flight, that one of her kids isn’t there, and she ends up asking a traveling polka band to give her a ride back to Chicago to check on her son after she manages to get from France to the United States. Again, “Home Alone” rocks, but it’s not O’Hara’s project. The ones that feature her more prominently are, automatically, even better. O’Hara also reprised her role in the sequel “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”

Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice” is a stone-cold classic, and it’s a perfect spotlight for just how weird Catherine O’Hara can be on screen. (After news of her passing broke, her co-star who plays the movie’s titular role, Michael Keaton, shared a statement on Instagram. “We go back before the first ‘Beetlejuice,’” he wrote. “She’s been my pretend wife, my pretend nemesis and my real life, true friend. This one hurts. Man am I gonna miss her.”) In this tale of a haunted house that retains its former residents, O’Hara plays Delia Deetz, wife to Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones) and mother to the sullen teenaged Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder). After the Deetzes move into a mansion occupied by Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alex Baldwin and Geena Davis) as ghosts — they’re the previous owners and decided to stick around, so to speak — the Maitlands start tormenting the Deetzes, trying to drive them out.

Keaton’s Beetlejuice, whose name is technically “Betelgeuse,” is a malevolent spirit summoned by the Maitlands to ensure the Deetzes leave the house … and while all of that is quite fun, O’Hara’s turn as the enigmatic artist Delia is a true highlight. There’s a reason that O’Hara returned for the legacy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” — she’s an indispensable part of this amazing ensemble cast.

In one of Christopher Guest’s earliest mockumentaries that featured his regular players — and by that we mean, one directed by him, because “This is Spinal Tap” was helmed by the late, great Rob Reiner — Catherine O’Hara gets to play the deliciously funny role of Sheila Albertson, a travel agent who auditions for the town musical with her husband and fellow travel agent Ron (Fred Willard, who passed away in 2020). The musical in question, “Red, White, and Blaine,” has been concocted by Blaine, Missouri native Corky St. Clair (Guest) after he spent some time in New York working in the theater. (It didn’t go well; one of the film’s funniest off-screen details is that he tried to stage a theatrical adaptation of the movie “Backdraft” and burned down a theater.) 

The concept of a bunch of stone-cold weirdos putting on a play commemorating a strange town known as the birthplace of the stool — a play that, incidentally, features a full alien abduction scene — is absolutely wonderful, and paired with Willard, O’Hara gives an unbelievably funny performance. (Look no further than a scene where she plays drunk at a Chinese restaurant; few people can ever top this feat of “drunk” acting.) Obviously, this entire endeavor builds to the performance of “Red, White, and Blaine,” which the cast hopes Broadway producer Mort Guffman might attend — in an obvious ode to Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot,” the guy never shows. Guest’s movies are largely improvised and rely on the strength of his performers to work, and “Waiting for Guffman,” which also features Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, and Michael Hitchcock, is a winner … even though Mort never materializes.

“Best in Show” is one of the best mockumentaries ever made, in large part because it focuses on a particularly ridiculous thing that some people take extremely seriously: professional dog shows. Set at the fictional Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show in Philadelphia, “Best in Show,” also helmed by Christopher Guest, features a bunch of his regulars once again — including Fred Willard, Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Michael Hitchcock, Guest himself, Michael McKean, John Michael Higgins, and, of course, Catherine O’Hara. Levy and O’Hara, longtime colleagues who came up together on the sketch series “SCTV,” play husband and wife this time and appear as Cookie and Gerry Fleck, a well-meaning if naïve couple from Florida who go to the show with their Norwich terrier Winky. Not only are they forced to stay in a hotel’s supply closet after all of their credit cards are declined, but every time Cookie and Gerry go out in public, they encounter yet another one of Cookie’s exes, and they all greet her the same way using her hysterically funny maiden name: “Cookie? Cookie Guggleman?”

Between an absolutely absurd catalog of Cookie’s sexual history (via those exes, all of whom are thrilled to see her) and a third-act twist where Cookie has an accident and Gerry, who actually has two left feet, must show Winky, “Best in Show” is incredibly funny from start to finish. It’s unquestionably one of O’Hara’s best roles, but because it’s just a movie — and one that runs for precisely 90 minutes at that — it can’t touch her best-ever performance on a long-running television series.

Something that’s so wonderful about Catherine O’Hara’s career is that she endured for so long based on her unbelievable talent, introducing herself to new generations. Even though we didn’t really get enough time with O’Hara, who almost definitely still had some great performances left in her before her untimely passing, we’re quite lucky that she found the time to play Moira Rose on “Schitt’s Creek,” a role that won her her first-ever Emmy Award and a role that she very nearly turned down because, and this is a quote, she was busy “doing nothing.” On the series created by Dan Levy — son of O’Hara’s long-time collaborator Eugene Levy, both of whom also star on the show — O’Hara plays Moira Rose, a fading soap-opera star with an astounding collection of wigs who, along with her wealthy family, is shocked when they lose their fortune. Along with her husband Johnny (Eugene), son David (Dan), and daughter Alexis (Annie Murphy), Moira is forced to live in a small town called Schitt’s Creek, which Johnny once purchased for David’s birthday as a joke.

Not only do the elder Levy and O’Hara still have great chemistry after years of working together, but there’s a reason O’Hara took home an Emmy for playing Moira. Between her outlandish couture, those aforementioned wigs, and the way that O’Hara practically invents new ways of speaking with her absolutely incredible line readings (the way she says “baby” is its own treasure), her performance as Moira is one for the ages. Again, O’Hara was really never bad in anything and elevated any project that made the smart choice to feature her … but “Schitt’s Creek” offered her the role of a lifetime.