Gene Wilder in a scene from ' Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Wilder’s nephew said on Monday that the actor and writer died late on Sunday in Stamford, Connecticut from complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

Wilder, whose third wife Gilda Radner died of ovarian cancer, was treated for lymphoma in 2000.

The wild-haired actor was a master at playing panicked characters caught up in schemes that only a comic genius such as Mel Brooks could devise, whether reviving a monster in Young Frankenstein or bilking Broadway in The Producers.

But he also knew how to keep it cool the charming candy man in the children’s favourite Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

He was acclaimed for his turn as The Waco Kid in Brooks’s third film, the spoof Western and box office smash Blazing Saddles. The 1974 movie shot down the myths perpetuated about the American West, pouring light on closeted racism, but it is also stacked full of gags and is often listed among critics’ top 10 comedy films.

Brooks and Wilder joined forces on the script for the director’s next film, Young Frankenstein, which poked fun at the Universal horror pictures of the 1930s.

Wilder co-starred with Richard Pryor in the train-murder comedy Silver Streak (1976) and in Stir Crazy (1980).

Gene Wilder (L) with Cleavon Little in a scene from the film Blazing Saddles.

“Gene Wilder — One of the truly great talents of our time. He blessed every film we did with his magic & he blessed me with his friendship,” Brooks said on Twitter.

The greatest comedic mind of my childhood is now gone,” actor Josh Gad wrote on Twitter. “RIP GeneWilder & thank you 4 your pure imagination. This one hits hard.”

Tweeted Jim Carrey: “Gene Wilder was one of the funniest and sweetest energies ever to take a human form. If there’s a heaven he has a Golden Ticket.”

Wilder was close friends with Richard Pryor and their contrasting personas - Wilder uptight, Pryor loose - were ideal for comedy. They co-starred in four films: Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Another You. And they created several memorable scenes, particularly when Pryor provided Wilder with directions on how to “act black” as they tried to avoid police in Silver Streak. But Wilder would insist in a 2013 interview that he was no comedian. He told interviewer Robert Osborne it was the biggest misconception about him.

“What a comic, what a funny guy, all that stuff! And I’m not. I’m really not. Except in a comedy in films,” Wilder said. “But I make my wife laugh once or twice in the house, but nothing special. But when people see me in a movie and it’s funny then they stop and say things to me about ‘how funny you were.’ But I don’t think I’m that funny. I think I can be in the movies.”

Though they collaborated on film, Wilder and Brooks met through the theatre. Wilder was in a play with Brooks’ then-future wife, Anne Bancroft, who introduced the pair backstage in 1963.

Wilder and Brookes were first introduced by Wilder’s Broadway co-star Anne Bancroft in the 1960s.

Brooks showed Wilder an early script entitled Springtime for Hitler, which would eventually become The Producers. He won the first of two Oscar nominations for his portrayal of the intoverted Leopold Bloom in the film — his first major role as an accountant who discovers the liberating joys of greed and corruption as he and Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) conceive a Broadway flop titled Springtime For Hitler and plan to flee with the money raised for the show’s production.

It was however his portrayal of eccentric factory owner Willy Wonka in the 1971 musical fantasy based on Roald Dahl’s 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that turned him into a superstar.

Wilder co-starred with Richard Pryor in several movies including the train-murder comedy Silver Streak (1976) and in Stir Crazy (1980).

His last major role was in a TV film version of Alice in Wonderland in the late 1990s, which also starred Ben Kingsley and Martin Short.

Wilder was born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee on June 11, 1933, the son of a Russian emigre. When he was 6, Wilder’s mother, who was of Polish descent, suffered a heart attack that left her a semi-invalid. He began improvising comedy skits to entertain her, the first indication of his future career. He started taking acting classes at age 12 and continued performing and taking lessons through college.

He developed a love for acting when he played Willy Loman in a high school adaptation of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, graduating from the University of Iowa with a degree in theatre.

Wilder studied at the Old Vic School in Bristol, England, becoming a talented fencer, and returned to the United States where he spent some time in the army.

He left the military, changed his name and studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.

His first acting job was in the off-Broadway play Roots in 1961 and, six years later he made his motion picture debut in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde as undertaker Eugene Grizzard, who is kidnapped by the fugitive couple.

Wilder worked mostly in television in recent years, including appearances on Will & Grace - including one that earned him an Emmy Award for outstanding guest actor - and a starring role in the short-lived sitcom Something Wilder. In 2015, he was among the voices in the animated The Yo Gabba Gabba! Movie 2. As for why he stopped appearing on the big screen, Wilder said in 2013 he was turned off by the noise and foul language in modern movies.

“I didn’t want to do the kind of junk I was seeing,” he said in an interview. “I didn’t want to do 3D for instance. I didn’t want to do ones where there’s just bombing and loud and swearing, so much swearing... can’t they just stop and talk instead of swearing?”

In September 1991, Wilder married his fourth wife Karen, a lip-reading coach. Walker-Pearlman said Wilder’s Alzheimer’s, which he had kept private, “never stole his ability to recognise those that were closest to him, nor took command of his central-gentle-life affirming core personality.” “He continued to enjoy art, music, and kissing with his leading lady of the last 25 years, Karen. He danced down a church aisle at a wedding as parent of the groom and ring bearer, held countless afternoon movie western marathons and delighted in the company of beloved ones,” he added

AP/AFP