The actor's daughter confirmed that he passed away at her home in Woodland Park, New Jersey. "Abe Vigoda was one of the nicest guys in the business...talent with a capital T, self deprecating and so sweet", she said. But boy, did he break through - first in 1972, as the ill-fated Corleone confidante Sal Tessio in The Godfather, and then, more iconically, in 1974 as Detective Phil Fish in ABC's classic cop comedy Barney Miller.

Our thoughts are with the Vigoda family during this hard time. He started acting as a teenager, attending the Theater School of Dramatic Arts at Carnegie Hall.

He picked up three supporting-actor Emmy nominations for the part. I always liked him", Tessio says to consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) with resignation, before futilely playing his last card: "Tom, can you get me off the hook? But he just had that demeanor that made him look exhausted and old and he played it so well that you believed he was actually old.

Apart from Abe Vigoda's life status, the page is barren except for a link underneath the actor's photo to a MP3 track called "Abe Vigoda's Dead (Premortem Mix)". Following People magazine's flub, Vigoda took out a full-page ad in Variety magazine.

That the actor was, in fact, still alive became an early meme - with references and sketches showing up in films such as Good Burger and on Late Night with both David Letterman and Conan O'Brien. "You look tired." "Of course I'm tired, I jogged five miles this morning, I'm exhausted".

The eclectic ensemble cast of Barney Miller has unfortunately endured a number of sad farewells over the years, including the death of Jack Soo, who played Detective Nick Yemana.

Vigoda also had roles in films where his longevity was the joke and appeared with the equally well-seasoned actress Betty White in a commercial during the Super Bowl in February 2010.

Unlike the creaky, lethargic Fish, Vigoda was a vigorous man who played handball regularly and was still jogging into his 80s.

After his big and small screen success, he also appeared in the films "Look Who's Talking" and "Joe Versus the Volcano". His wife, Beatrice, died in 1992.

Vigoda's inevitable demise, which has been incorrectly reported several times, had become something of a pop culture joke, even inspiring the long-running website IsAbeVigodaDead.com, which consisted of a blank page with the word "No" on it. It now reads "Yes".