Catherine O’Hara, the veteran actor who played the mom in both Home Alone and Beetlejuice, as well as appearing in many of Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries, died on 30 January 2026 at the age of 71.
I met her once, in the fall of 1993. I was attending film school at The College of Santa Fe. I chose that school because it had, right on campus, full Hollywood sound stages built into the Greer Garson Center. The idea was to allow film students to work hand-in-hand with Hollywood crews on actual film projects.
That fall, the Lawrence Kasdan / Kevin Costner film Wyatt Earp was shooting on campus. As a sophomore, I didn’t get the chance to work on the film. But, I had a work-study job manning “The Cage”, the room where all the student-use film gear was stored, as well as the keys to all the editing suites. The Cage was right down the hall from the main entrance to the soundstage Wyatt Earp was shooting in. Inside, they had built Wyatt’s house in full scale (I know this because I sneaked onto the set more than once).
While I couldn’t actually work on the film, I did get some interesting encounters with the cast and crew. One night as filming wrapped and a group of people, including Lawrence Kasdan and Dennis Quaid, walked by The Cage, I climbed the chain-link fence wall wearing a grasshopper hat and made my best impersonation of grasshopper noises. Kasdan couldn’t be bothered with me, but Quaid laughed his ass off. One afternoon, a few of us ended up in an impromptu basketball game with Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid, and got our butts handed to us by two guys twice our age.
When the film wrapped, there was a cast/crew party on the soundstage. I was closing up The Cage for the night as people were staggering away from the party. Catherine O’Hara, who played Aimee Earp, was noticeably drunk, and asked me if I would escort her to her trailer. Of course I did.
We walked slowly, hand in hand to keep her steady. She asked about the school and the film program, I asked about Beetlejuice and working with Tim Burton. She leaned her head on my arm. I don’t remember what she said. At her trailer, she gave me a quick hug and a peck on the cheek, said thank you and good night.
A short stroll through the moonlight, some idle banter, a hug, and then she was gone. I never ran into her again. I left the college that spring, and The College of Santa Fe folded permanently during the Recession of 2007. After that, it operated for a few years as the Santa Fe Institute of the Arts, but that ended up failing as well. I revisited the abandoned campus on a cross-country road trip with my kids in 2019, 26 years to the month after my stroll with Catherine O’Hara. She was very sweet, very personable, very down-to-Earth, and I have no doubt a great many people are missing her now that she is gone.
