Catherine OHaras Cause of Death Revealed

Beloved Home Alone icon Catherine O'Hara's cause of death has been revealed days after her death at 71 sparked mass Hollywood heartbreak.

O'Hara, best known for her roles in the holiday classic and show Schitt's Creek, passed away suddenly on January 30.

The actress died from a blood clot in her lungs, per The  County Medical Examiner's Office report obtained by TMZ.

O'Hara's immediate cause of death is listed as pulmonary embolism, with rectal as the underlying cause. 

This is a developing news story. More follows. 

 A blood clot in the lungs, known as a pulmonary embolism (PE), is most commonly caused by a blood clot—usually from the leg or pelvis—breaking free and traveling to the lung, a condition called deep vein thrombosis (DVT), according to the Mayo Clinic.

Key risk factors include surgery, prolonged immobility, cancer, pregnancy, hormone therapy, and smoking. 

Rectal cancer is a kind of cancer that starts as a growth of cells in the rectum, per the Mayo Clinic. The rectum is the last several inches of the large intestine. It starts at the end of the final segment of the colon and ends when it reaches the short, narrow passage known as the anus. 

Soon after she passed her family said that the star suffered from a 'brief illness.'

An ambulance was called out to the actress' Brentwood home in the Los Angeles area just before 5am on the morning of her death - January 30 - and she was reported to be in a 'serious condition'. 

She passed away in a Los Angeles hospital.

Her husband Bo Welch and their sons, Matthew and Luke, shared an obituary and soon after there was a private celebration of life.

The movie star was born in Toronto, Canada, and was one of seven children. Her first experience of acting was when she played the Virgin Mary in a Nativity play.

O'Hara worked as a waitress at the Second City Theater in Toronto after leaving high school. As a waitress, she came across the likes of Dan Aykroyd, and Joe Flaherty.

Speaking to People in 2024, the actress shared: 'I was lucky enough to watch everybody.'

O'Hara eventually joined the company in 1974. However, she later confessed to feeling anxious whenever she was on the stage.

She admitted to The New Yorker in 2019: 'My crutch was, in improvs, when in doubt, play insane. Because you didn't have to excuse anything that came out of your mouth. It didn't have to make sense.'

The star eventually landed a role on a TV sketch show called Second City Television, which aired on NBC in the 80s. The actress became famous for her impressions of various well-known celebrities, including Meryl Streep and Brooke Shields.

O'Hara made her film debut in 1980, when she starred alongside the likes of John Candy and Eugene Levy in Double Negative.

In 1988, she starred as Delia Deetz, the stepmother of Winona Ryder's Lydia, in the hit movie Beetlejuice, which proved to be a huge commercial success.

And in 1990, she played Macaulay Culkin's on-screen mom in Home Alone.

O'Hara - who reprised her role for 1992's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York - told People: 'It's a perfect movie, isn't it?'

Her other roles included Best in Show in 2000 and 2003's A Mighty Wind, as well as the Beetlejuice sequel in 2024.

In 2020, O'Hara won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the hit TV sitcom Schitt's Creek, which was created by Eugene and Daniel Levy.

During her acceptance speech, O'Hara - who also won a Golden Globe and a SAG Award - said: 'I will forever be grateful to Eugene and Daniel Levy for the opportunity to play a woman of a certain age, my age, who gets to fully be herself.'

O'Hara is survived by her husband Bo and their sons Matthew and Luke.