CATHERINE O’HARA IS too gracious, too self-effacing—in short, too Canadian—to brag about the effect she has on people, but you don’t have to look far to find someone who’s happy to do it for her. Martin Short, for instance, remembers being mid-conversation with Tom Ford and Anjelica Huston at a small dinner party in Los Angeles a few years back when his friend Catherine came through the door. “Anjelica went completely still,” he says. “She said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, I’ve got to meet her, I’ve got to meet her.’ It was like Paul McCartney walking in in 1965.”
O’Hara’s devotees don’t just admire the arc of her career, they dote over all the tiny comedic choices—a character’s limp, say, or her drowsy scorn, or her melodramatic way…