Catherine O’Hara, Beloved Comic Actress, Dies at 71

O’Hara would find her groove with the crew of improv pros brought together by Christopher Guest for a series of mockumentaries that began with 1996’s Waiting for Guffman and continued with 2000’s Best in Show, 2003’s A Mighty Wind and 2006’s For Your Consideration. The latter earned her a nomination for best supporting actress at AARP’s Movies for Grownups Awards in 2006.

Schitt’s Creek would be a career-capping triumph and the perfect personification of her comic talents. The small show created by Levy and his son Dan about a wealthy family forced to live in a tiny town would dominate the Emmys in its sixth and final season. (She also won an AARP Movies for Grownups Award for best TV actress for the role.) It brought O’Hara, always a beloved figure, a new generation of fans and put her at the center of cultural attention.

She told The Associated Press that she pictured Moira, a former soap opera star, as someone who had married rich and wanted to “remind everyone that (she was) special, too.” With an exaggerated Mid-Atlantic accent and obscure vocabulary, Moira spoke unlike anyone else, using words like “frippet,” “pettifogging” and “unasinous,” to show her desire to be different, O’Hara said. To perfect Moira’s voice, O’Hara would pore through old vocabulary books, “Moira-izing” the dialogue even further than what was already written.

The show also brought a career renaissance that led to a dramatic turn on HBO’s The Last of Us and a straitlaced role as a Hollywood producer in The Studio, both of which earned her Emmy nominations. (She also received an AARP Movies for Grownups television best-actress nomination for her work on The Studio.)

She is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, sons Matthew and Luke, and siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O‘Hara, Tom O’Hara and Patricia Wallice.