"In 1978, the actress Catherine O'Hara, then a twenty-four-year-old cast member on the cult Canadian sketch-comedy show "SCTV," told a late-night interviewer that at times she felt underestimated as a performer. "It sounds like I'm complaining here," she said. "But I think people don't take comedy seriously enough." She went on: "When I get sent for auditions, even for commercials and things, it's never for an acting commercial, nothing you could act for. It's always, We need silly goof-off girls.""
"O'Hara, a self-professed "good Catholic girl at heart," was a natural at the art of sublimation; she had an almost ascetic impulse to vacate her own gentle personality in order to serve as a vessel for whatever eccentric, delusional, hammy weirdos might speak through her. She was nothing like Lola Heatherton, her oblivious, preening lounge-singer character on "SCTV"-who once began an interview with Mother Teresa by asking, "What do you get out of this?""
"When I pretend to be someone else, I go to the depths of nothingness. The more I do that-become nothing-and the more I let the character take over, the more I feel like that person. When you become the person, not"
In 1978 Catherine O'Hara, age twenty-four and a cast member on SCTV, experienced being underestimated and was often cast in non-acting, "silly goof-off" roles for commercials. O'Hara pursued deep character immersion and deliberately vacated her own gentle personality to become a vessel for eccentric, delusional, hammy characters. A self-described "good Catholic girl at heart," she embraced an ascetic impulse toward sublimation. Her Lola Heatherton lounge-singer persona once asked Mother Teresa, "What do you get out of this?" O'Hara approached characters with compassionate curiosity and created lasting comedic earworms, including the one-word "Kevin!" from Home Alone.
Read at The New Yorker
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