Catherine O’Hara’s cause of death has been released, one week after the Canadian comedic actor died at the age of 71.
The Schitt’s Creek star died on Jan. 30 from a pulmonary embolism, with rectal cancer listed as an underlying cause, according to O’Hara’s death certificate, which was obtained by Rolling Stone and People on Monday afternoon.
According to the death certificate released by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office and viewed by Global News — first secured by TMZ — O’Hara died at a Santa Monica, Calif., hospital and her body was cremated.
It’s unclear how long O’Hara had been battling cancer. Her agency, Creative Artists Agency, previously said the actor died at her home in Los Angeles “following a brief illness,” but didn’t provide any further details at the time.
O’Hara’s career was launched with the Second City comedy group in Toronto in the 1970s. It was there that she first worked with Eugene Levy, who would become a lifelong collaborator and her Schitt’s Creek co-star. The two would be among the original cast of the sketch show SCTV, short for Second City Television.
The series, which began on Canadian TV in the 1970s and aired on NBC in the U.S., spawned a legendary group of esoteric comedians that O’Hara would work with often, including Martin Short, John Candy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis and Joe Flaherty.
She won her first Emmy for her writing on the show.
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Her second, for best actress in a comedy series, came four decades later for the role of Moira Rose in Schitt’s, a career-capping triumph and the perfect personification of her comedic talents. The series, created by Levy and his son, Dan, about a wealthy family forced to live in a tiny town, would dominate the Emmys in 2020 for its sixth and final season.
The unexpected news of O’Hara’s death was met with shock around the world.
Macaulay Culkin, who played O’Hara’s son in two Home Alone movies, wrote, “Mama. I thought we had time. I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you. But I had so much more to say. I love you. I’ll see you later.”
Eugene Levy, who played O’Hara’s on-screen husband in Schitt’s Creek, said words seem “inadequate to express the loss I feel today.”
“I had the honor of knowing and working with the great Catherine O’Hara for over fifty years. From our beginnings on the Second City stage, to SCTV, to the movies we did with Chris Guest, to our six glorious years on Schitt’s Creek, I cherished our working relationship, but most of all our friendship. And I will miss her. My heart goes out to Bo, Matthew, Luke, and the entire O’Hara family,” he said in a statement.
“What a gift to have gotten to dance in the warm glow of Catherine O’Hara’s brilliance for all those years. Having spent over fifty years collaborating with my Dad, Catherine was extended family before she ever played my family. It’s hard to imagine a world without her in it. I will cherish every funny memory I was fortunate enough to make with her,” Dan Levy, star and co-creator of Schitt’s Creek, wrote on Instagram.
Seth Rogen, who worked with O’Hara on The Studio, wrote, “Really don’t know what to say… I told O’Hara when I first met her I thought she was the funniest person I’d ever had the pleasure of watching on screen.”
“Home Alone was the movie that made me want to make movies. Getting to work with her was a true honour. She was hysterical, kind, intuitive, generous… she made me want to make our show good enough to be worthy of her presence in it. This is just devastating. We’re all lucky we got to live in a world with her in it,” he added.
— With files from The Associated Press
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