Early life
Catherine Reitman grew up in Los Angeles, California. Her father is Slovak-born Canadian director Ivan Reitman, and her mother is French-Canadian actress Genevieve Robert, who converted to Judaism.1 She attended Cate School3 and later studied acting at the University of Southern California.1 She also trained in improvisation at The Groundlings in Los Angeles, the influential comedy workshop that has launched many notable comedic careers.1
Growing up, Reitman was a regular presence on her father's film sets. Among her earliest screen appearances are small roles in Ivan Reitman productions from her childhood, including Twins (1988) and Kindergarten Cop (1990).1 She also contributed voice work to Space Jam (1996).1
Career
After her childhood appearances, Reitman built a steady adult career as a character actress and comedian in Los Angeles through the 2000s. She appeared in the satirical film Thank You for Smoking (2006), directed by her brother Jason, and had memorable supporting roles in the comedy Knocked Up (2007), produced and directed by Judd Apatow, I Love You, Man (2009), and the romantic comedy Friends with Benefits (2011).4
On television, she guest-starred on a wide range of series, including How I Met Your Mother, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Weeds, and Black-ish.4 From 2011 to 2013 she hosted and produced the web series Breakin' It Down with Catherine Reitman, an early demonstration of her instinct for creating original content around her own voice.4
The defining chapter of Reitman's career began in 2016, when she and her husband Philip Sternberg co-founded Wolf + Rabbit Entertainment ULC,5 a production company established to develop original projects. Their first major production was Workin' Moms, a half-hour single-camera comedy for CBC about career-focused women navigating work, family, and relationships. Reitman created the series, served as showrunner and executive producer, directed multiple episodes across all seven seasons, and starred as Kate Foster, a high-powered PR executive. The show premiered on CBC in January 2017 and was later acquired by Netflix, which distributed it internationally as a Netflix Original.2 It ran for seven seasons before concluding in 2023.2
Workin' Moms earned Reitman significant industry recognition. In 2018 alone, the series received nine Canadian Screen Award nominations, including Best Actress in a Comedy Series and Best Director for Reitman.2 The show received multiple Canadian Screen Award nominations across its run and was nominated twice for the International Emmy Award.2 The Alliance for Women in Media recognized Reitman with Gracie Awards in both 2020 (Best Lead Actress, Comedy and Best Direction, Comedy) and 2021 (Showrunner Fiction, Comedy).6
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters (1984)
Reitman's connection to Ghostbusters predates her own appearance in the franchise. When Ivan Reitman was directing the original Ghostbusters (1984), he arranged for Catherine, her brother Jason, and their mother to appear as panicked bystanders fleeing from 550 Central Park West during the film's climactic sequence. The cameo was abandoned after the first take when both children became frightened and Jason refused to do a second take. The footage was later stored by the studio in salt mines in Kansas along with other archival material.
Decades later, that discarded footage found new life. In Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), the scene appears in a sequence where Gary Grooberson shows Phoebe Spengler and Podcast recorded footage from the Manhattan Cross-Rip of 1984, giving Catherine's childhood moment an inadvertent place in the franchise's continuity.
Ghostbusters II (1989)
When Ivan Reitman directed Ghostbusters II (1989), he cast Catherine, then approximately eight or nine years old, in a small but memorable role. She appears in the early portion of the film as the "Little Girl with Puppy,"1 participating in the happiness index research being conducted by Egon Spengler at the Institute for Advanced Theoretical Research. In the scene, a child is placed in a room full of toys and then given a puppy while Egon measures her emotional response. Reitman recalled that Harold Ramis would hand her the puppy and then direct the production to take it away, repeating the test to capture the emotional shift.7
Beyond the filming itself, Reitman's memories of Ghostbusters II include time spent on set between takes. Her father gave her and Jason the run of the set and allowed her to select one item from the production to take home. She chose a large life-sized stuffed bear, which she named Cappuccino.7 Reitman has spoken warmly about the Ghostbusters franchise's enduring cultural presence, joking that while Mariah Carey owns December, her father owned October by virtue of the franchise's perennial Halloween popularity.7
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Although Reitman does not appear personally in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the film moved her deeply. Directed by her brother Jason, the film includes a tribute to Harold Ramis, the actor and writer who played Egon Spengler across the original films and who died in 2014.8 Reitman has said the tribute brought her to tears, noting the emotional weight it carried for those who knew Ramis personally.7
