Politicians joined actors and artists to pay tribute yesterday to Marcel Marceau, the Jewish mime artist who has died, aged 84.

President Sarkozy led a national homage to the so-called poet of silence, saying that he had “carried stage arts to their highest point”. François Fillon, the Prime Minister, hailed “the artist, the master, the Resistance fighter” - a reference to Marceau’s involvement as a young man in the struggle against the Nazis.

“Marceau had a rare gift – being able to communicate with everyone beyond the barrier of language,” Mr Fillon said.

The broadcaster Jacques Chancel said: “He spoke in silence. And what is amazing is that – while so many people speak and manage to say nothing – for him it was the silence that brought a whole melody of language.”

Marceau’s daughter, Camille, said yesterday that he had died on Saturday, adding: “We are gathered around him.”

She would not reveal the circumstances of his death, but said that he would be buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, resting place of France’s most famous men and women.

Widely recognised as the world’s finest contemporary exponent of his art, Marceau had an influence that spread well beyond mime, according to Christine Albanel, the French Culture Minister. “Numerous artists in many disciplines have drawn upon his work,” she said.

Michael Jackson, for instance, based his Moonwalk dance on Marceau’s sketch, Walking Against the Wind. The ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev was another who admitted to having taken inspiration from him.

Marceau, credited with rescuing his art from virtual oblivion almost single-handedly after the Second World War, was acclaimed on Broadway in 1955 on his first step to international stardom. His stage persona, Bip the Clown – with his sailor suit and a rose perched on a top hat – became a global icon that spawned generations of street performers.

“Mime, like music, knows neither borders nor nationalities,” he once said. “If laughter and tears are the characteristics of humanity, all cultures are steeped in our discipline.”

Emmanuel Vacca, an actor who was Marceau’s assistant, said that his shows were “in some way perfect works where only a small gesture was needed to give an idea of an emotion or a situation”.

“Le mime Marceau” was born Marcel Mangel in Strasbourg, eastern France, the son of a Jewish butcher who was deported and died at Auschwitz. He changed his name to Marceau to disguise his Jewish origins and joined his brother, Alain, in the French Resistance, where he became a liaison officer with the troops led by General George Patton of the US Army.

“The people who escaped the concentration camps could not talk about them,” Marceau said. “They didn’t know what to say. I have Jewish origins – perhaps that counted in the choice of silence, subconsciously.”

He was an admirer of Charlie Chaplin and trained under the French mime artist Etienne Decroux before founding his own company in 1948. He later created the International School of Mime in Paris in an attempt to perpetuate his art.

However, critics say his stature was such that other mime artists have been kept in his shadow.

“He created a genre, a unique genre. But curiously I do not see any followers,”Mr Chancel said.

Marceau was married three times and had four children. The date of his funeral had not been set last night.

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