“Being able to laugh at life,” she said in a past interview, “is one of the greatest gifts”

Catherine O’Hara attends 2020 Netflix SAG After Party on January 19, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.Credit : Michael Kovac/Getty

Catherine O’Hara spoke about dying in interviews from recent years, handling the topic with her beloved brand of humor.

When asked by Parade magazine in 2024 what the best part of being 70 is, she quipped, “Still being alive!” She echoed that when Julia Louis-Dreyfus asked the same question on her Wiser Than Me podcast in 2024.

“Oh, boy, being alive,” O’Hara said was the best part. “And I don’t think of my age, except sometimes I’ll be around a bunch of younger people, you know, working.” After some thoughtful remarks, O’Hara cracked a joke: “Sometimes I think, wow, at best, maybe they look at me as like some adorable old lady. I’m saying at best.”

Then, in March 2025 during a grouped Los Angeles Times interview with her cohorts from the comedy show The Studio, she was asked whether she feels she has more power at this stage in her career. O’Hara quickly joked, “I’ve been treated that way lately — am I dying or something?”

Seth Rogen continued with the bit, joking to his costar, “This is how we wanted to tell you. This man’s actually a doctor. This is a fake interview.” She shared a big laugh with her cast mates.

Catherine O’Hara and husband Bo Welch on March 10, 2024.Kayla Oaddams/FilmMagic

On Friday, Jan. 30, PEOPLE confirmed that O’Hara died. The comedy legend, known for Home Alone, Beetlejuice, Schitt’s Creek and much more, was 71 years old, and she’s survived by her husband Bo Welch, 74.

Back in 2013, O’Hara did a questionnaire for Vanity Fair that featured prompts about death and dying.

When asked how she would like to die one day, she replied, “Laughing, surrounded by my old grandchildren, who are telling me to ‘let go, already, Grandma!’ “

Catherine O’Hara on Feb. 4, 2019.Amy Sussman/Getty

And to the question, “If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?” she answered: “I’ve got to believe God is into recycling. I’d like to come back in the body of a much more evolved person who has lovely, thick hair and skin that tans.”

This commitment to finding levity shined through all of O’Hara’s interviews. In that 2024 chat with Parade, she explained that a sense of humor had also been key to her marriage with Welch, a production designer she met on the set of 1988’s Beetlejuice with whom she had two kids.

“My husband and I love to laugh — we’d laugh 50 times a day if we could,” she said at the time. “Even when we have a fight, we’ll somehow say something to make fun of the other person, so you just have to laugh at the ridiculousness of us.”

As she told 519 Magazine in 2019: “Being able to laugh at life and at yourself more than at others is one of the greatest gifts we’ve been given as humans. So any chance I can, I have to share that or give that to anybody else, you know, lucky me.”