Catherine O’Hara wittily shared how she wanted to die in resurfaced interview… 13 years before death at 71

by

A recent clip from a thirteen-year-old interview shows Catherine O’Hara giving a typically witty response when asked about how she’d like to pass away.

The celebrated comedian, known for his roles in films like Home Alone and After Hours, and television series such as SCTV and Schitt’s Creek, died on Friday at 71 years old.

Newly released 911 recordings show she told dispatchers she was struggling to breathe before paramedics arrived at her home in Brentwood that morning.

O’Hara was rushed to the hospital after an emergency call, but was pronounced dead within a few hours. The cause of death has not yet been released.

Back in 2013, when she completed the Proust questionnaire for Vanity Fair, she described her last moments in a noticeably different way.

The actress expressed a wish to pass away peacefully, with laughter and surrounded by her grandchildren, playfully urging her to finally ‘let go’.

She is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, a production designer, whom she met on the set of the 1988 film Beetlejuice. They had been married for almost 34 years.

They have two sons, Matthew, 31, and Luke, 28, who are both working in the entertainment industry. Matthew works as a set dresser, and Luke is involved in set construction.

The actress, known for her role in Heartburn, is also survived by her six siblings: Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O’Hara, Tom O’Hara, and Patricia Wallice.

In the same interview where she talked about death, she was asked to identify her greatest love and simply answered, ‘My family.’

According to a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson, firefighters were called to O’Hara’s home at 4:48 am for a medical emergency. They transported a woman, believed to be around 70 years old, to the hospital in serious condition.

Although she hadn’t been sick beforehand, she seemed weak at her last public appearance – the Emmys last September – before her passing.

Just under three weeks ago, on January 11th, she didn’t attend the Golden Globes, even though she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Television series for ‘The Studio,’ a comedy show created and starring Seth Rogen.

Many people publicly shared their sadness after her passing, including Macaulay Culkin, who remembered her as his on-screen mother from ‘Home Alone,’ and Brooke Shields, who she famously parodied during her early career on the comedy show ‘SCTV’ in the 1970s.

Seth Rogen, Ike Barinholtz, Dan Levy, and Michael Keaton – all colleagues from her various projects like The Studio, Schitt’s Creek, and Beetlejuice – also voiced their support.

Martin Scorsese, the director who worked with O’Hara on the 1985 comedy After Hours, appeared shocked by the news of her passing. A photo of his reaction during a FaceTime call with his daughter, Francesca, was shared on social media.

During her life, O’Hara lived with a rare condition called situs inversus, where the organs in her chest and abdomen were positioned on the opposite side of her body than usual.

Doctors found her heart was located on the right side of her chest during a tuberculosis test required by her son’s nursery school.

She playfully described herself as an oddball in a 2021 interview, explaining that while she appreciates modern medicine, she doesn’t want to work within that system.

O’Hara admitted he deliberately avoided learning the name of the condition, describing it vaguely as involving ‘cardi-inversa’ and ‘dexter-cardia’ with some other ‘inversa’ component.

She admitted she might seem uninformed, but confessed she actually preferred not knowing, as she hadn’t been aware of it previously.

Read More

2026-01-31 08:04