Catherine O’Hara played drunk better than anyone

Catherine O’Hara played the best drunk.

Over the course of her career, she had occasion to tackle many different women under the influence; every time, she delivered a performance that married the close observational skills of a skilled actress to the comic chops of a funny-in-her-bones comedian born to make people laugh.

Consider Marilyn Hack, the mediocre actress she played in the 2006 Christopher Guest comedy For Your Consideration. Marilyn, along with the rest of the cast of the film-within-a-film Home for Purim, becomes convinced that they will be nominated for Oscars. When she isn’t, a news crew shows up at her house, catching her as she’s throwing out the two bottles of liquor she’s clearly just guzzled, first thing in the morning.

I suppose you could call what ensues an episode of cringe comedy, as the Marilyn we meet in that scene is a pitiable figure – she’s plastered, slurring through a face immobilized by plastic surgery, whip-sawing between self-pity and bitter invective against the French actress who, in her view, stole her nomination. “Ooh-la-la,” she murmurs, cradling the reporter’s face. She turns away and starts toward her house, but then turns back, filled with the drunken confidence that she has more to say. She doesn’t, of course, she just repeats herself for the fifth time (“I diddun get NOM-inayded!”) and then invites the crew into her home. (“I have so much food! C’mon!”).

It’s funny, sure – but it’s also achingly human, and fragile, and real. That was the sweet spot she found in every role.

In her early years on the sketch comedy series SCTV, she played many, many women whose sense of self was clearly inflated by alcohol, drugs or both. Most notably, Lola Heatherton, the thinly-veiled sendup of Vegas lounge singers who was so perpetually strung out that she could barely make it through any of the glitzy variety shows she headlined.

In “Lola Heatherton: Bouncing Back to You,” she teeters on her stiletto heels as she dismisses her dancers and announces that instead of “New York, New York,” she’ll instead perform a number of her own. “YOU KNOW THE ONE!” she screams at her off-screen director, “THE ONE YOUUUU DIDN’T WANT ME TO DOOOO!”

The mood shifts. The lights go mellow. A plaintive piano plunks out a sad melody. “No-one caaaaaaaaaaaares,” she warbles, lower lip quivering in lieu of actual vibrato, “No-one daaaaaaaaaares to/You’re all just paaaaaaaa-ra-siiiiiiiiiiiiiites!”

Once again – overweening self-pity matched seamlessly to old-school showbiz: Glycerine tears and glitter.

In the 1996 Christopher Guest film Waiting for Guffman, she plays Sheila Albertson, a much more dialed-in (and dialed-down) performance. Sheila isn’t a famous actress or a Vegas chanteuse, she’s just a small-town travel agent who comes alive whenever she and her husband (Fred Ward, again) get to trod the boards in local dinner theater productions.

There’s lots of great, quotable lines in Guffman – me, I’m partial to “I’ll always have a place at the Dairy Queen,” – but anyone who’s seen the film remembers one thing: The scene in the Chinese restaurant, where Sheila proceeds to get wildly drunk.

It’s remarkable how sharply observed, how narrowly focused O’Hara is in this scene. Sheila is drunk, and she’s at that precise stage of drunkenness where her sentences begin but then, abruptly, devolve into a series of confusing gestures. The stage where she’s lagging a good 30 seconds behind the table conversation, where her resentment towards her husband starts burbling out of her in whispered asides that absolutely everyone can hear.

That scene lasts all of 1 minute and 18 seconds, but in that time, Sheila becomes the film’s most important, most indelible character.

Of course, the role for which she won the most acclaim is that of hilariously affected actress Moira Rose, in Schitt’s Creek. Moira enjoyed her wine, but she rarely got drunk – and when she did, she did so iconically.

Moira is hired as the commercial spokesperson for a local maker of fruit wine. We see the filming of the commercial in question, and it’s clear Moira’s been dipping into his Riesling Rioja.

Not right away, of course – she starts out in control, smooth, on rails. “In the lee of a picturesque ridge,” she intones, “lies a small, unpretentious winery. One that pampers its fruit … like its own babies.”

So far so good – but wait. At this point, Moira reaches for a glass of wine next to her.

… Grapples for it, really.

Then: “HI!” she chirps. “I’m Moira Rose.” (That chipper, high-pitched “HI!” is a tip-off, too. That’s not the Moira we know.) “And if you love fruit wine as much as IIII do, you’ll appreciate the crassmunship” (crassmunship?) “of a local vintner …”

And now it’s clear: Moira’s blotto, but her actorly training is allowing her to keep it together … you know, mostly.

Catherine O’Hara observed people closely, and was particularly adept at playing characters as their facades crumbled (Marilyn Hack, Lola Heatherton) or, more often, as they were just developing hairline fractures (Sheila Albertson, Moira Rose). She played drunk people for comic effect, but that effect wasn’t so much broad and slapstick (or, not simply broad and slapstick) as it was focused and – to many of us – chillingly, hilariously familiar. She found the tics, the mannerisms, the specific beats of drunkenness and used them to open us up to her characters’ frailty, their vulnerability, their humanity.

That openness, that incisiveness, that ruthlessly perceptive humor – that’s why we loved her.