As we previously reported, beloved actress Catherine O’Hara has passed away at the age of 71.
While no cause of death has been given, O’Hara’s passing seems to have come as a shock to those who knew her best.
Now, countless friends, fans, and colleagues are paying tribute to the screen icon, including Macaulay Culkin, who famously played O’Hara’s son, Kevin McCallister, in the 1990 holiday classic Home Alone.
Culkin took to Instagram moments ago to share a short but powerful remembrance of the woman who played his onscreen mother.
“Mama. I thought we had time,” Culkin wrote alongside a photo of himself and O’Hara in the film (both stars reprised their roles for 1992’s Home Alone 2).
“I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you but I had so much more to say,” he continued, adding, poignantly:
“I love you. I’ll see you later.”
Culkin and O’Hara maintained a close relationship over the years, and she delivered a speech when he received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023.
At the time, O’Hara noted with amusement that he was now “older than I was when I played his mother.”
Culkin also included a photo from that occasion in his social media tribute.
“Home Alone was, is and always will be a beloved global sensation… the reason families all over the world can’t let a year go by without watching and loving Home Alone together is because of Macaulay Culkin,” she said in her speech.
The former co-stars often spoke of one another fondly in the decades since they met on set.
In one of her final interviews, O’Hara humorously recalled the day when she and her husband, Bo Welch, nearly had a real-life Home Alone moment with their two sons.
“We were in New York once; I think it was New York,” the Schitt’s Creek star told People magazine last year.
“Bo and I got on the subway, we turned around, the doors are closing, and they weren’t on… I screamed and people screamed with me,” she recalled.
The story has a happy ending, as the doors reopened, and O’Hara was reunited with her boys.
“It makes me sick to think what could have happened,” said O’Hara.
O’Hara racked up dozens of credits in classic films over the years, including Beetlejuice and Best In Show. She also won an Emmy for her work on the beloved sitcom Schitt’s Creek.
But for fans of a certain generation, O’Hara is likely best remembered as Kevin McCallister’s heroic mom.
Our thoughts are with Catherine’s loved ones during this incredibly difficult time.