Catherine O'Hara's sudden death left friends in "complete shock" after it was revealed she’d faced a "brief illness". The Hollywood legend died in Los Angeles on Friday (January 30). The comedic actress, best known for her roles in Home Alone and Schitt's Creek, was aged 71. In her final hours, the mum of two had been taken to hospital amid reports she was "struggling to breathe".

As per Page Six, a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson shared that paramedics were called to the Home Alone star’s Brentwood home at 4:48 a.m. Friday morning for a medical aid call. The spokesperson shared that O’Hara was taken to hospital in “serious condition”. No official cause of death has been provided.

It has since been revealed O'Hara had been diagnosed with a rare medical condition before her death. During a Virtual Happy Hour with Kathryn Hall in 2020, the comedic actress opened up about her dextrocardia situs inversus diagnosis and explained how she discovered the condition much later in life.

Dextrocardia is a rare congenital (present at birth) heart defect in which the heart is positioned on the right side of the chest instead of its normal position on the left side.

While it may not cause problems, it tends to occur with other conditions that can have serious effects on the heart, lungs and other vital organs, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

The condition can also cause other organs to be on the opposite side of the body.

It is not known whether dextrocardia situs inversus contributed to O'Hara's death.

Addressing her condition at the time, she explained: "But I had to get a TB test when our youngest was in co-op nursery school and I went to my husband’s doctor, and he said let’s do some baseline tests, and one of them was an EKG," she explained.

"He calls us into his office and says, 'You're the first one I've met!'" O'Hara said of the doctor revealing her diagnosis. "I don't even know the name, because I don't want to know the name. Something cardio-inversus. And then dextrocardia and something-inversus. People are going to think I'm so ignorant not to know this, but I kind of don't want to know. Because I didn't know before that."

"When the doctor told us that my heart was on the right side and my organs were flipped, my husband immediately said, 'No, her head's on backwards,'" she recalled.

O'Hara rose to fame when she took on the role of Delia Deetz in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice.

She is survived by her husband of 33 years, Bob Welch, and their two sons, Matthew, 31, and Luke, 29.