Home Alone actor Devin Ratray has reacted to costar Catherine O’Hara’s death at age 71.
“One of the greatest people I ever met,” Ratray, 49, who played O’Hara’s onscreen son Buzz McCallister, wrote over a throwback photo of the pair via Instagram on Friday, January 30.
O’Hara ‘s death at her home in Los Angeles on Friday came “after a brief illness,” according to a statement from her agency, Creative Artists Agency.
A cause of death is not yet known.
TMZ was first to report the news.
O’Hara played Kate McCallister, the mother of Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin), in 1990’s Home Alone and 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. The original film sees 8-year-old Kevin defend his home from burglars after his family accidentally went on a Christmas vacation without him, while the sequel follows Kevin on a solo trip to New York after he accidentally boards the wrong plane the following Christmas.
The comedian reflected on Home Alone’s legacy in a 2024 interview with People.
“I need to care about the whole thing. I don’t care to do a great role in a bad project. You want to be part of something good, and that’s how you go,” she said at the time. “Then the people that you’re going to get to work with and the experience, the day-to-day experience. And in that case, it was lovely. All those kids that played our children were just lovely.”
O’Hara continued, “[Director] Chris Columbus, lovely man. He’s a family guy himself. I think he had like five kids already at the time. And [screenwriter] John Hughes. John Hughes wasn’t there a lot, but wrote such a beautiful script, obviously. It’s a perfect movie, isn’t it?”
O’Hara also weighed in on The New York Times’ 2024 report estimating that the McCallister family was in the top 1 percent of earners in Chicago, as evidenced by their large house.
“I was aware of how beautiful it was, but no, I never thought of their money,” she said. “That’s not where my head was when I was doing [the movie]. Of course, they all went to Paris, didn’t they?”
“I guess Peter had his own religion,” she joked of her on-screen husband, played by the late John Heard. “Church of the McCallisters.”
O’Hara is also known for her roles as Delia Deetz in 1988’s Beetlejuice and its 2024 sequel and Cookie Fleck in 2000’s Best in Show.
Additionally, O’Hara famously portrayed Moira Rose in the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek, which aired for six seasons on CBC Television from 2015 to 2020. The role earned her a 2020 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy.
The actress’ most recent work was the AppleTV+ series The Studio, in which she starred opposite Seth Rogen. She earned a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series at the 2025 Emmys and Best Supporting Actress on Television the 2026 Golden Globes, which took place on January 11. (O’Hara did not attend the awards ceremony at the Beverly Hilton in California. She was also absent from the Critics’ Choice Awards the week prior.)
O’Hara was born in Toronto as the sixth of seven children. She met husband Bo Welch on the set of Beetlejuice, going on to tie the knot with the production designer in 1992. The pair shared two sons, Matthew, 32, and Luke, 29.
