Popcorn Video (Australia)

30/01/2026

Very sad passing :-(

Catherine O’Hara, best known for Home Alone, Beetlejuice and Schitt’s Creek, has sadly passed away, aged 71, after a brief illness.

O’Hara started her comedy career in the 1970s and helped to create the Canadian sketch show SCTV. She broke into film in the 1980s with her first big-screen credit in the romantic comedy Nothing Personal with Donald Sutherland, and in 1985 she had a role in Martin Scorsese’s black comedy After Hours.

Catherine O’Hara managed to make difficult characters utterly delightful.

In 1988, O’Hara starred in Tim Burton’s comedy horror Beetlejuice and later reprised the role in the 2024 sequel. On the set of the original, she met her husband, production designer Bo Welch, and they married in 1992.

O’Hara played Macaulay Culkin’s careless mother in the smash hit 1990 comedy Home Alone, a role she also reprised for the 1992 sequel.

“It’s a perfect movie, isn’t it?” she said of Home Alone to People in 2024. She added, of the experience: “It was lovely. All those kids that played our children were just lovely.”

O’Hara recently appeared at Culkin’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, wiping away tears as she praised him.

Culkin paid tribute to O’Hara on Instagram, writing: “Mama. I thought we had time. I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you but I had so much more to say. I love you. I’ll see you later.”

She began working with Christopher Guest in 1996, starring in the mockumentary Waiting for Guffman, and starred in three more of his films: Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration in 2006.

Guest praised O’Hara for her ability to master comedy and drama in their last collaboration together. “Catherine is one of not many actresses that can pull off both sides of this, where she’s incredibly funny but can also shift into an emotional area that surprises people and it’s just amazing, that transition,” he said.

O’Hara also provided her voice for many animated films including Chicken Little, Over the Hedge, Monster House, Frankenweenie and, most recently, The Wild Robot.

On the small screen, she had roles in The Larry Sanders Show, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm and 30 Rock before she reunited with another Guest actor, Eugene Levy, for the hit sitcom Schitt’s Creek.

“It’s always more fun working with someone you know,” she said to the Guardian in 2021. “I get too nervous doing solo bits – it’s too much pressure and it feels like showing off. With someone else, you can share the showing off.”

The show, about a wealthy family who are forced to downsize, ran for six seasons and won O’Hara an Emmy award.

Her recent television roles also included A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Last of Us, which scored her an Emmy nomination.

Her Last of Us co-star Pedro Pascal paid tribute on Instagram. “Oh, genius to be near you,” he wrote. “Eternally grateful. There is less light in my world, this lucky world that had you, will keep you, always.”

O’Hara had recently been seen in the award-winning comedy series The Studio with Seth Rogen. The role had garnered her Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.

Ron Howard, who directed O’Hara in the 1992 comedy drama The Paper, paid his respects on social media.

“This is shattering news,” he wrote. “What a wonderful person, artist and collaborator. I was lucky enough to direct, produce and act in projects with her and she was simply growing more brilliant with each year.”

Meryl Streep, who starred in Heartburn with O’Hara, also shared a statement: “Catherine O’Hara brought love and light to our world, through whipsmart compassion for the collection of eccentrics she portrayed ... such a loss for her family and friends, and the audience she graced as friends.”

Rita Wilson also called her “authentic and truthful in all she did” on Instagram while Lily Tomlin wrote “bright, beautiful, and full of joy that touched so many” next to a picture of O’Hara.

Mike Myers shared with the Hollywood Reporter: “It is a very sad day for comedy and for Canada. She was one of the greatest comedy artists in history, an inspiration for millions and above all a very elegant lady. Sending much love and condolences to her family.”

“I’m always drawn to characters who have no idea of the impression they’re making on other people,” O’Hara said in 2021. “We’re all delusional, really, and I love that about us humans and I love playing it.”

30/01/2026

Catherine O’Hara, best known for Home Alone, Beetlejuice and Schitt’s Creek, has sadly passed away, aged 71, after a brief illness.

O’Hara started her comedy career in the 1970s and helped to create the Canadian sketch show SCTV. She broke into film in the 1980s with her first big-screen credit in the romantic comedy Nothing Personal with Donald Sutherland, and in 1985 she had a role in Martin Scorsese’s black comedy After Hours.

Catherine O’Hara managed to make difficult characters utterly delightful.

In 1988, O’Hara starred in Tim Burton’s comedy horror Beetlejuice and later reprised the role in the 2024 sequel. On the set of the original, she met her husband, production designer Bo Welch, and they married in 1992.

O’Hara played Macaulay Culkin’s careless mother in the smash hit 1990 comedy Home Alone, a role she also reprised for the 1992 sequel.

“It’s a perfect movie, isn’t it?” she said of Home Alone to People in 2024. She added, of the experience: “It was lovely. All those kids that played our children were just lovely.”

O’Hara recently appeared at Culkin’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, wiping away tears as she praised him.

Culkin paid tribute to O’Hara on Instagram, writing: “Mama. I thought we had time. I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you but I had so much more to say. I love you. I’ll see you later.”

She began working with Christopher Guest in 1996, starring in the mockumentary Waiting for Guffman, and starred in three more of his films: Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration in 2006.

Guest praised O’Hara for her ability to master comedy and drama in their last collaboration together. “Catherine is one of not many actresses that can pull off both sides of this, where she’s incredibly funny but can also shift into an emotional area that surprises people and it’s just amazing, that transition,” he said.

O’Hara also provided her voice for many animated films including Chicken Little, Over the Hedge, Monster House, Frankenweenie and, most recently, The Wild Robot.

On the small screen, she had roles in The Larry Sanders Show, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm and 30 Rock before she reunited with another Guest actor, Eugene Levy, for the hit sitcom Schitt’s Creek.

“It’s always more fun working with someone you know,” she said to the Guardian in 2021. “I get too nervous doing solo bits – it’s too much pressure and it feels like showing off. With someone else, you can share the showing off.”

The show, about a wealthy family who are forced to downsize, ran for six seasons and won O’Hara an Emmy award.

Her recent television roles also included A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Last of Us, which scored her an Emmy nomination.

Her Last of Us co-star Pedro Pascal paid tribute on Instagram. “Oh, genius to be near you,” he wrote. “Eternally grateful. There is less light in my world, this lucky world that had you, will keep you, always.”

O’Hara had recently been seen in the award-winning comedy series The Studio with Seth Rogen. The role had garnered her Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.

Ron Howard, who directed O’Hara in the 1992 comedy drama The Paper, paid his respects on social media.

“This is shattering news,” he wrote. “What a wonderful person, artist and collaborator. I was lucky enough to direct, produce and act in projects with her and she was simply growing more brilliant with each year.”

Meryl Streep, who starred in Heartburn with O’Hara, also shared a statement: “Catherine O’Hara brought love and light to our world, through whipsmart compassion for the collection of eccentrics she portrayed ... such a loss for her family and friends, and the audience she graced as friends.”

Rita Wilson also called her “authentic and truthful in all she did” on Instagram while Lily Tomlin wrote “bright, beautiful, and full of joy that touched so many” next to a picture of O’Hara.

Mike Myers shared with the Hollywood Reporter: “It is a very sad day for comedy and for Canada. She was one of the greatest comedy artists in history, an inspiration for millions and above all a very elegant lady. Sending much love and condolences to her family.”

“I’m always drawn to characters who have no idea of the impression they’re making on other people,” O’Hara said in 2021. “We’re all delusional, really, and I love that about us humans and I love playing it.”

16/09/2025

Robert Redford, the Hollywood actor turned director and activist, has died at the age of 89.

The Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid star died in his sleep at his home in the mountains outside Provo, Utah on Tuesday,

Redford was best known for his starring roles in movies such as The Way We Were, Indecent Proposal and All the President's Men.

Redford also directed award-winning films such as Ordinary People and A River Runs Through It.

The actor and Oscar-winning director eschewed his status as a Hollywood leading man to champion causes close to his heart.

His passion for the art of filmmaking led to his creation of the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit that supports independent film and theater and is known for its annual Sundance Film Festival.

Redford was also a dedicated environmentalist, moving to the mountains of Utah in 1961 and leading efforts to preserve the natural landscape of the state and the American West.

Redford acted well into his later years, reuniting with Jane Fonda in the 2017 Netflix film Our Souls at Night.

The following year, he starred in The Old Man & the Gun at age 82, a film he said would be his last – although he said he would not consider retiring.

"To me, retirement means stopping something or quitting something," he told CBS Sunday Morning in 2018.

"There's this life to lead, why not live it as much as you can as long as you can?"

In October 2020, Redford voiced his concern about the lack of focus on climate change in the midst of devastating wildfires in the western United States, in an opinion piece he wrote for CNN.

Drawn to arts and sports – and a life outside of sprawling Los Angeles – Redford earned a scholarship to play baseball at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1955. That same year, his mother died.

"She was very young, she wasn't even 40," he said.

Redford said his mother was "always very supportive (of my career)" — more so than his dad.

"My father came of age during the Depression and he was afraid to take chances … so he wanted the straight and narrow path for me, which I was just not meant to be on," he said.

"My mother, no matter what I did, she was always forgiving and supportive and felt that I could do anything.

"When I left and went to Colorado and she died, I realised I never had a chance to thank her."

Redford soon turned to drinking, lost his scholarship and eventually was asked to leave the university. He worked as a "roustabout" for the Standard Oil Company and saved his earnings to continue his art studies in Europe.

"(I) lived hand to mouth, but that was fine," Redford said of his time in Europe. "I wanted that adventure. I wanted the experience of seeing what other cultures were like."

When he returned to the US, Redford began studying theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.

Shy and closed off, Redford said he didn't fit in with the other drama students who were eager to show off their acting skills.

After a performance in front of his class with a fellow student that ended in frustration and disaster, Redford said his teacher pulled him aside and encouraged him to stick with acting.

In 1959, Redford graduated from the academy and got his first acting role on an episode of Perry Mason. His acting career was "uphill from there," he said.

His big acting break came in 1963, when he starred in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park on Broadway – a role he would later reprise on the big screen with Jane Fonda.

Around this time, Redford married Lola Van Wagenen and started a family. His first child, Scott, died from sudden infant death syndrome just a few months after his birth in 1959. Shauna was born in 1960, David in 1962, and Amy in 1970.

As his acting career was taking off, Redford and his family moved to Utah in 1961 where he bought two acres of land and built a cabin himself.

"I discovered how important nature was in my life, and I wanted to be where nature was extreme and where I thought it could maybe be everlasting," he told CNN.

Redford made a name for himself as a leading man in 1969 when he starred opposite Paul Newman – already a major star – in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Western about a pair of outlaws won four Academy Awards.

Redford said he "will forever be indebted" to Newman, whom he credited with helping him get the role.

The two actors had great on-screen chemistry, became lifelong friends and reunited in The Sting in 1973, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Redford starred in a string of hit movies throughout the 1970s: Jeremiah Johnson; "The Way We Were, co-starring Barbra Streisand; The Great Gatsby; and with Dustin Hoffman in 1976's All The President's Men, about the Watergate scandal.

Teaming up with director Sydney Pollack on Jeremiah Johnson, Redford fought with the studio to get the film made the way he wanted – a precursor to his career as a director and his support for independent filmmaking.

"It was a battle from the get-go," Redford told Inside The Actor's Studio.

"They (the studio) said … 'You've got $4 million, put it in the bank in Salt Lake City, you can shoot wherever you want, but that's it. If it goes over, it comes out of your hide.'"

With spare dialogue and stunning scenery, the film tells the story of a Mexican War veteran who has left the battlefield to survive as a trapper in the American West.

It was released more than three years after it was made because, according to Redford, the studio's sales chief thought the film was "so unusual" that it wouldn't find an audience.

Jeremiah Johnson ended up grossing nearly $67 million. It wasn't the only time Redford's passion for the art of filmmaking put him at odds with the studios that funded his work.

"The sad thing you have to work against, as a filmmaker, is held opinions about what works or doesn't work," Redford said. "Sports movies don't work, political movies don't work, movies about the press don't work – so I've done three of them."

Redford made his directing debut in 1980 with Ordinary People, a drama about an unhappy suburban family which earned the Academy Award for Best Picture and another one for him as best director.

He continued starring in hit films such as The Natural in 1984, which tapped into his passion for baseball, and 1993's An Indecent Proposal, which paired him with a much younger Demi Moore.

He later directed the 1993 film A River Runs Through It, which won three Academy Awards, 1994's Quiz Show and The Horse Whisperer in 1998, which he also starred in.

Each year Redford's institute holds the Sundance Film Festival in Utah – the largest annual showcase in the United States for independent film.

Many young filmmakers got their big breaks at Sundance, including Steven Soderbergh with S*x, Lies, and Videotape in 1989, Quentin Tarantino with Reservoir Dogs in 1992 and Ryan Coogler with 2013's Fruitvale Station.

Redford's lifelong impact on the film industry was recognised in 2002 with an honorary Oscar.

In his later years, Redford never lost his passion for storytelling through film and remained an outspoken champion of environmental causes. He frequently demurred when asked about retiring.

02/04/2025

Val Kilmer, who starred in Top Gun, The Doors, Tombstone and Batman Forever, among many more, has sadly passed away.

The actor was best known for his roles in Top Gun, Tombstone, and Batman Forever but also earnt a reputation as a temperamental star.

12/05/2024

Legendary B-movie king Roger Corman, who directed and produced hundreds of low-budget films and discovered such future industry stars as Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, has died. He was 98.

Corman died May 9 at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., surrounded by family members, the family confirmed to Variety.

“His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age. When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that,'” the family said in a statement.

Corman’s empire, which existed in several incarnations, including New World Pictures, and Concorde/New Horizons, was as active as any major studio and, he boasted, always profitable. He specialized in fast-paced, low-budget genre movies — horror, action, science fiction, even some family fare — and his company became a work-in-training ground for a wide variety of major talents, from actors like Nicholson (“Little Shop of Horrors”) and De Niro (“Boxcar Bertha”) to directors like Francis Ford Coppola (“Dementia 13”) and Scorsese (“Boxcar Bertha”).

29/03/2024

Sad to hear of the passing of a great actor, Louis Gossett Jr, who was the first black man to win an oscar as a supporting actor.
Louis Gossett Jr, the first Black man to win a supporting actor Oscar and an Emmy winner for his role in the seminal US TV miniseries Roots, has died aged 87.
Gossett died on Thursday night in Santa Monica, California. No cause of death was revealed.
Having started acting in high school after suffering behind sidelined from the school basketball team due to injury, Gossett went on to roles on stage, film and television, debuting on Broadway at the age of 16.
He broke through on the small screen as Fiddler in the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries Roots, which depicted the atrocities of slavery on TV. The sprawling cast included Ben Vereen, LeVar Burton and John Amos.
In 1983 Gossett became the third Black Oscar nominee in the supporting actor category.
He won for his performance as the intimidating Marine drill instructor in An Officer and a Gentleman opposite Richard Gere and Debra Winger. He also won a Golden Globe for the same role.
"More than anything, it was a huge affirmation of my position as a Black actor," he wrote in his memoir.
"The Oscar gave me the ability of being able to choose good parts in movies like 'Enemy Mine,' 'Sadat' and 'Iron Eagle,'" Gossett said in Dave Karger's 2024 book 50 Oscar Nights.
Louis Gossett Jr later said he "needed to be free" of his Oscar. He said his statue was in storage.
"I'm going to donate it to a library so I don't have to keep an eye on it," he said in the book.
"I need to be free of it."
Gossett appeared in such TV movies as The Story of Satchel Paige, Backstairs at the White House, The Josephine Baker Story, for which he won another Golden Globe, and Roots Revisited.
But he said winning an Oscar didn't change the fact that all his roles were supporting ones.
He played an obstinate patriarch in the 2023 remake of The Color Purple.
Gossett struggled with alcohol and co***ne addiction for years after his Oscar win. He went to rehab, where he was diagnosed with toxic mould syndrome, which he attributed to his house in Malibu.
In 2010, Gossett announced he had prostate cancer, which he said was caught in the early stages. In 2020, he was hospitalised with COVID-19.
Gossett went to Hollywood for the first time in 1961 to make the film version of A Raisin in the Sun. He had bitter memories of that trip, staying in a cockroach-infested motel that was one of the few places to allow Black people.
In 1968, he returned to Hollywood for a major role in Companions in Nightmare, NBC's first made-for-TV movie that starred Melvyn Douglas, Anne Baxter and Patrick O'Neal.
This time, Gossett was booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel and Universal Studios had rented him a convertible. Driving back to the hotel after picking up the car, he was stopped by a Los Angeles County sheriff's officer who ordered him to turn down the radio and put up the car's roof before letting him go.
Within minutes, he was stopped by eight sheriff's officers, who had him lean against the car and made him open the trunk while they called the car rental agency before letting him go.
"Though I understood that I had no choice but to put up with this abuse, it was a terrible way to be treated, a humiliating way to feel," Gossett wrote in his memoir.
"I realised this was happening because I was Black and had been showing off with a fancy car — which, in their view, I had no right to be driving."
After dinner at the hotel, he went for a walk and was stopped a block away by a police officer, who told him he broke a law prohibiting walking around residential Beverly Hills after 9 pm. Two other officers arrived and Gossett said he was chained to a tree and handcuffed for three hours. He was eventually freed when the original police car returned.
"Now I had come face-to-face with racism, and it was an ugly sight," he wrote.
"But it was not going to destroy me."
In the late 1990s, Gossett said he was pulled over by police on Pacific Coast Highway while driving his restored 1986 Rolls Royce Corniche II. The officer told him he looked like someone they were searching for, but the officer recognised Gossett and left.
He founded the Eracism Foundation to help create a world where racism doesn't exist.
He is survived by sons Satie, a producer-director from his second marriage, and Sharron, a chef whom he adopted after seeing the 7-year-old in a TV segment on children in desperate situations. His first cousin is actor Robert Gossett.
Gossett's first marriage to Hattie Glascoe was annulled. His second, to Christina Mangosing, ended in divorce in 1975 as did his third to actor Cyndi James-Reese in 1992.

29/10/2023

Sad to hear that actor Matthew Perry, best known for his role as Chandler Bing in Friends, has passed away.

Emergency services reportedly responded to calls of a cardiac arrest at the actor’s home on Saturday about 4pm, where he was found unresponsive. Reports claim he was found in his whirlpool bath.

Perry, 54, was well known for his character Chandler Bing on the hit 90s sitcom Friends which aired for 10 seasons. He was also well known for his roles in Fools Rush In, The Whole Nine Yards and 17 Again alongside Zac Efron.Perry’s first credited role was a small part in the drama “240-Robert” in 1979. From there other bit parts came his way in shows including “Charles In Charge,” “Silver Spoons” and “The Tracey Ullman Show.”

His first film role was while still in high school, playing opposite River Phoenix in the 1988 film “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon.” The year before the film’s release Perry starred in the sitcom “Second Chances” (later renamed “Boys Will Be Boys”) about a man who dies and returns to earth to mentor his younger self, played by Perry. The series failed to find its audience and Perry continued to land more high profile roles in projects including “Growing Pains,” “Who’s The Boss” and “Beverly Hills, 90210.”