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Entertainment
Catherine O’Hara’s best TV and film roles, from Beetlejuice to Schitt’s Creek
6 months ago
4 min read
Catherine O’Hara is one of the most beloved and quotable actors in some of the most iconic films and series of our time. So as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice arrives in cinemas, we’re taking the chance to celebrate her.
Who is the greatest woman on the planet? You don’t need to answer that: we all know it’s Catherine O’Hara.
Now 70, the Canadian actor has been lighting up our lives in some of the most well-known and endlessly adored TV series and films of the last four decades. Her characters are beloved for being outlandish; loving, but with an edge. They are creative and weird and melodramatic, speaking to those on the outside. And they’re a long way from the roles women are usually allowed to play once they pass the age of 40.
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No one sums that singularity up more than Delia Deetz, O’Hara’s character in Tim Burton’s 1988 comedy-horror classic Beetlejuice. Happily, O’Hara reprises the role of the ‘wicked stepmother’ in Burton’s reboot Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, out now, in which she stars alongside Jenna Ortega and Winona Ryder.
And there’s still plenty more to come from O’Hara. Having recently filmed series two of The Last Of Us alongside Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, she will also voice Pinktail in The Wild Robot, a new animated film about a robot stranded on a desert island, out next month.
But first, here are some of O’Hara’s greatest on-screen roles so far…
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Delia Deetz, Beetlejuice (1988)
Delia was a creative savant wrenched from the New York world of art, shoulder pads and red lips into a life in the ghostly countryside – a prototype Moira Rose, if you will. Along with her stepdaughter, forever goth heroine Lydia (Winona Ryder), Delia is forced to move to a dilapidated house inhabited by the ghosts of its former residents, Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin). Unfortunately, the Maitlands want their house back, and enlist the help of the mischievous Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) to get it.
Cute fact: it was on the set of Beetlejuice that O’Hara met her now husband, set designer Bo Welch, with whom she has two sons.
Kate McCallister, Home Alone (1990)
Has anyone ever said the name Kevin and not thought of Mrs McCallister falling backwards on a flight to Paris?
In the film that defines Christmas, O’Hara plays an ever-forgetful but devoted mum who does anything she can do to get back to her eight-year-old son (Macaulay Culkin) after he accidentally gets left behind in their massive mansion. That includes hitching a lift with a very loud polka band led by Gus (O’Hara’s friend and fellow Canadian comic John Candy).
You might be as happy as I am to know that Culkin and O’Hara are still pals now: she even recently presented him with his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Credit: Sky
Sally, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
O’Hara joins forces with Tim Burton again for everyone’s favourite creepy Christmas animation. She voices a rag doll who becomes the love interest of Pumpkin King Jack Skellington, who decides to take over Christmas Town when he becomes bored with frightening people.
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Cookie Fleck, Best In Show (2000)
Ricky Gervais’s The Office owes a debt of gratitude to this largely improvised and deeply funny mockumentary about a highly competitive dog show, directed by Christopher Guest.
O’Hara’s sexually liberated character Cookie is married to Gerry (played by her old friend and Schitt’s Creek husband Eugene Levy), a quiet and clumsy man in soaring financial debt. The pair have to sleep in a hotel closet, but nothing will get in the way of their dreams for their terrier Winky. Perfect.
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Jessica Wilhern, Penelope (2006)
This deeply underrated romcom about love and self-acceptance is bursting with A-listers including James McAvoy, Reese Witherspoon and Christina Ricci. O’Hara plays the aristocratic mother of Penelope (Ricci), who lives a secluded life after being born with a pig’s snout.
The only way to break the curse is to marry “one of her own kind”. But things get complicated when one of the suitors hired to woo her ends up falling in love with her.
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Aunt Ann, Temple Grandin (2010)
O’Hara was nominated for an Emmy for her role in this moving television film based on a true story. It stars Claire Danes as Temple, a young woman with autism who is due to go to university after spending the summer at her aunt’s farm. Aunt Ann (O’Hara) encourages Temple’s life-changing curiosity for and affinity with the livestock industry.
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Moira Rose, Schitt’s Creek (2015 -2020)
The series that got a planet through lockdown is everything that’s good about telly. It’s centred on the Rose family, including dad Johnny (Eugene Levy), his son David (Dan Levy, Eugene’s real-life son and co-creator of the series) and daughter Alexis (Annie Murphy), who suddenly find themselves in financial dire straits and are forced to live in a rundown motel.
But the beating heart of it all is matriarch Moira. Her wigs, her weirdness, her way with words (bébé): Moira is one of the greatest and most unique fictional characters the world has ever known.
Images: Getty; Netflix, HBO, Sky, Warner Bros
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