Los Angeles, Jan 20 (IANS): Award-winning actress Catherine O'Hara thinks she's inherited her sense of humour from her family.

The actress told Reader's Digest magazine: "It was just a given in our family. Both my parents, God bless them, are gone but they were both really, really funny."

"Mum raised seven kids, then she went into real estate, and at dinner, she would impersonate the people that she met that day. And my dad worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway and was such a joke teller that he would get into trouble for laughing too much at work."

"Being funny was a way to get attention at the table but I'm not sure we even thought of it like that. It was just the way you had to be if you wanted to get a word in."

Despite this, O'Hara is happy to play a variety of different roles as an actress.

She explained: "It's great when you get a phone call with an offer to do something really different."

O'Hara previously said that she sees some strong similarities between Canadian and British humour, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

The 'Home Alone' star observed that there's a "sweetness" and an "edge" to her own sense of humour.

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, the actress explained: "We laugh at each other but we also laugh at ourselves, much like people in the UK and Ireland. You’re being made fun of by someone who you know loves you, so there’s sweetness, but an edge, and it means everything doesn’t have to be soft, because you know you’re safe."