Catherine O’Hara was posthumously honoured at the 2026 Actor Awards (formerly the SAG Awards), approximately one month after her death.
The Canadian comedian and actor, who died on Jan. 30 from a pulmonary embolism, won best female actor in a comedy series for her performance on The Studio.
The audience gave the beloved actor a standing ovation after she was announced as the winner at the Shine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Fellow Canadian Seth Rogen, co-creator of The Studio, accepted the award on her behalf.
“I was asked to assume the very sad honour of accepting this award on O’Hara’s behalf,” Rogan began. “I know she would have been honoured to receive this award from her fellow performers, who I know she respected so much. She was such big fans of all of yours.
“I obviously have been reflecting on the time I was fortunate enough to spend with her and working with her, and something that I’ve just been marvelling at over the last few weeks was was really her ability to be generous and kind and gracious, while never, ever minimizing her own talents and her own ability to contribute to the work that we were doing. She knew she could destroy, and she wanted to destroy every day on set.”
He went on to say that O’Hara showed “that you can be a genius and be kind, and one of those things does not have to come at the expense of the other in any way, shape or form.”
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“So I guess I’ll just leave you with this. If you have people in your lives that don’t know her work, if there are kids in your lives or just people who are out of touch or stupid or something, just show them O’Hara dancing to Harry Belafonte in Beetlejuice. Show them O’Hara hurting her knee in Best in Show and doing that amazing thing where she hobbles around and tells the people, as they are laughing, that that’s Catherine O’Hara,” Rogen said.
“We were lucky that we got to live in a world where she so generously shared her talents with us,” he concluded.
The Studio also won best comedy series and best actor in a comedy series for Rogen. In the show, O’Hara played the movie executive Patty Leigh.
O’Hara’s win marked the first time a female actor has won a posthumous Actor Award and the third time in history that one has been awarded. Heath Ledger was previously awarded for outstanding performance by a male actor in a supporting role in 2009 for his portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight. Chadwick Boseman was also posthumously awarded for outstanding performance by a male actor in a leading role in 2021 for his role as Levee Green in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
O’Hara’s cause of death was released one week after the Canadian actor died. 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.
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.
Her second, for best actress in a comedy series, came four decades later for the role of Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek, 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.
— With files from The Associated Press
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
