Appreciation: Catherine O'Hara was an onscreen benediction

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

It is painful to have to write about Catherine O’Hara, so alive and lively a presence, in the past tense.O’Hara has lived inside my head — is it too corny to say my heart? — from “SCTV” to “Schitt’s Creek” to “The Studio,” on whose second season she was scheduled to start work, when she died, Friday at 71.Any appearance constituted a recommendation for — a benediction upon — whatever she was appearing in; you felt she would only say yes to things that used her well, that sounded fun or interesting, and that her casting reflected well on the project and people who cast her.

I think of her not as a careerist, but a Canadian.Of joining “Schitt’s Creek,” she said when I interviewed her in 2015, “it took me a few moments to commit, [but] I already trusted [co-creator, co-star] Eugene [Levy] as a writer and an actor, and as a good man who I could stand to spend time with.” Television Actor Catherine O’Hara, known for her roles on shows such as ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and ‘The Studio’ as well as films such as ‘Home Alone,’ has died.

She was 71.This is how it began for her, in Toronto, where her brother Marcus was dating Gilda Radner, who was in “Godspell” with Levy and Martin Short.“And it was really watching Gilda when I realized, ‘cause I’d always liked acting in school, that it was actually a local possibility.

And then she got into Second City theater, and I was a waitress there — it’s like I stalked her — and then she did the show for a while and then took on a job for the National Lampoon.So I got to understudy or take her place — I got to join the cast, and Eugene was in it.

It was really just the luck of having a professional actor suddenly in my life.”As an “SCTV” early adopter, O’Hara was first attractive to me because she was funny, but she was also beautiful — a beauty she could subvert by a subtle o...