(ANSA) - Rome, July 3 - Actor, writer and director Paolo Villaggio, one of the greats of Italian comedy, died at a Rome clinic on Monday at the age of 84. "Bye Dad, now you are free to fly," Villaggio's daughter Elisabetta said on her Facebook page on Monday.
Villaggio is best known for the character of bumbling bookkeeper Ugo Fantozzi, who he played in a series of movies that produced some of Italian cinema's most memorable moments. These included Fantozzi declaring that Battleship Kotiomkin, a parody of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, was a "cagata pazzesca" - "an incredible piece of crap" - in Il secondo tragico Fantozzi (The Second Tragic Fantozzi, 1976) .
"I recall Paolo Villaggio," Premier Paolo Gentiloni said via Twitter. "Extraordinary comic talent who taught generations of Italians to recognize their mannerisms". The actor will lie in State at Rome city hall early on Wednesday so fans can pay their respects before a non-religious funeral later that day at Rome's Casa del Cinema (Home of Cinema) centre, his children said.
Oscar-winning comic actor and director Roberto Benigni said the news of Paolo
Villaggio's death "enveloped my heart with sadness" and said Villaggio "was the greatest clown of his generation, a pitiless, revolutionary, liberating child." He said "Fantozzi represents us all, humiliates us and corrects us, with him all anonymous people found their Lord. he was the most unpredictable and purest person I ever met. Thank you dear Paolo, we are beholden to you for an immense joy".