Gene Shalit, the popular film critic who spent decades with TODAY, has died. He was 100 years old.

In a statement to NBC News, Shalit’s family said he “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life.”

Born March 25, 1926, Shalit was an instantly recognizable personality. Along with his distinctive handlebar mustache, poofy hair, eyeglasses and bow ties, he is best remembered for his love of puns while doing reviews on the show’s “Critic’s Corner” segment.

A graduate of the University of Illinois, Shalit became a part-time TODAY personality in 1970 and was elevated to a full-time role in 1973, replacing Joe Garagiola. He remained with the show until he retired in 2010. “It’s enough already,” he said in a statement announcing his retirement.

In addition to his reviews, Shalit interviewed scores of celebrities during his TODAY tenure. His 1979 sit-down with Carol Channing is best remembered for the actor telling a story about having trouble understanding the British accent that left him in tears from laughing so hard.

“What’s the matter with him?” a smiling Channing said as Shalit tried to gather himself.

His movie reviews were often punctuated by his use of puns, which became his calling card.

Shalit made regular appearances on classic game shows “What’s My Line?” and “To Tell the Truth” and wrote for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Glamour and TV Guide. He also wrote and broadcast a daily piece called “Man About Anything” on NBC’s radio network for over a decade.

In addition, he authored the 1987 anthology “Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor.” He also compiled the book “Great Hollywood Wit” in 2002.

“Shalit has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston’s Symphony Hall and Tanglewood, played his bassoon on stage in Lincoln Center, and conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in a full concert of classical music. In none of these venues has he ever been invited back,” read a cheeky bio of Shalit in the 2007 book “Mazel Tov: Celebrities’ Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories.”

He also lent his voice as a character named Gene Scallop in a 2007 episode of “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

He became pop culture fodder, often being lampooned on “Family Guy” and portrayed by Horatio Sanz on “Saturday Night Live.”

Shalit had six children with late wife Nancy, one of whom, Emily, died in 2012 from ovarian cancer.

Gene Shalit, the fast-talking funnyman who reviewed films, plays and books for NBC’s “Today” show has died. He was 100.

Shalit’s family confirmed the longtime critic’s death Friday, telling NBC that he “passed away peacefully after 100 years of an amazing life.”

According to a 2010 interview with Guy Ludwig, Shalit’s producer for more than 20 years, Shalit was hired as a contributor at “Today” in 1968. He reviewed books once a month or so, but audiences were so fascinated by his eccentric personality and equally unconventional looks that NBC ramped up the critic’s on-air appearances.

In January 1973, on the same day he was promoted to arts editor, Shalit debuted “Critic’s Corner,” the segment that would ultimately make him a household name. In 2010, Shalit retired as one of the last regular film critics on a major network.

Ludwig referred to Shalit as the “foxy grandpa” of the “Today” show.

While Shalit’s quirky film reviews cemented his TV star status, his interview style made him a favorite among Hollywood’s biggest figures. Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand and Robert De Niro were among the A-listers whom Ludwig said “only would talk to Gene.”

According to Shalit’s longtime former producer, Sophia Loren “so trusted Gene as a television personality” that after she’d gone through legal troubles and a scandal, she went to Shalit exclusively.

“She knew her story would be fairly told but also that Gene would be sensitive to some of the things about it that were sensitive to her,” Ludwig said. “Gene was articulate and sensitive, but also got the story.”

In March, “Today” posted a 100th birthday tribute to Shalit narrated by Al Roker, who said, “Even Sophia Loren couldn’t resist putting her hands into Gene’s hair. I mean, just a legend.”

Eugene Shalit was born March 25, 1926, in New York City and grew up in Morristown, N.J. He launched his elementary school’s first newspaper, “The Spotlight,” and purchased a fedora to seal his fate as a journalist. In Morristown High School he wrote the school newspaper’s humor column “The Broadcaster.” In 1949, he graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Shalit cut his teeth in media as an entertainment columnist for McCall’s magazine, eventually landing the role of senior film critic for Look magazine in 1968 and writing a humor column for Ladies’ Home Journal. His quick wit, punchy puns and unique voice came through even on the page, and NBC took notice.

“No one at NBC had seen him. They’d only read his stuff. So he walked into this executive’s office and the executive took one look at him and said, ‘Mr. Shalit, have you ever thought of radio?’” Ludwig told “Today.”

“They didn’t know how the public would react to someone who looked so different from people who were typically on TV in 1967.”

On “Critics Corner,” Shalit favored humor over the highfalutin. He was an everyman’s critic. Of 1997’s action-thriller “Face/Off,” he said, “Now, ‘Face/Off’ is a literal title, because both of their faces are taken off. Then each face is put onto the other’s head. Even their voices are switched with microchip implants. In other words, this is an entirely reasonable, rational movie!”

During his tenure, he was known to bust up his colleagues, and “Today” anchors ranging from Edwin Newman, Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley to Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Roker.

But not everyone appreciated Shalit’s style. In 1989, a leaked in-house memo from Gumbel, then a “Today” show co-host, to Marty Ryan, the former executive producer of the NBC program, complained that Shalit’s film reviews “are often late and his interviews aren’t very good.”

During an interview promoting his 1987 book “Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor,” Eileen Prose asked Shalit who he respected as a reviewer.

“Gene Shalit,” he responded.

“I don’t think there’s any critic that believes a word that any other critic says, because you have to be so individualistic when you’re a critic,” he continued. “Sometimes you’ll read somebody else, but I rarely do.”

While Shalit brought a sense of humor to his reviews and interviews with stars — some of which would go haywire because Shalit would keel over laughing — he took the critic gig seriously. He told Prose that while most people see only a handful of movies a year, and often only the buzziest ones, he sees “the stuff that’s the stuffing, that they wouldn’t want to see.”

“I have to suffer through that, and I will never leave a movie before it’s over, no matter how bad it is,” he said, noting that he only does it because he loves it.

Shalit’s larger-than-life persona was parodied in popular culture — not just by Jon Lovitz and Horatio Sanz on “Saturday Night Live,” but by Shalit himself, who voiced his own parody “Gene Scallop” on “SpongeBob Squarepants.” Eyebrow doppelganger Eugene Levy also took a crack at the critic on “Second City Television,” and Shalit was parodied in multiple episodes of “Family Guy.”

Shalit was married to Nancy Lewis for 28 years until her death in 1978 and never remarried. The couple had six children: Peter, Willa, Emily, Amanda, Nevin and Andrew. Emily died from ovarian cancer in 2012.

Gene Shalit, a movie critic and arts reporter for the Today show over four decades who was known for his puffy hair, oversized handlebar mustache and affection for groan-inducing puns, has died. He was 100.

Shalit’s family announced the death Friday to NBC News, saying in a statement that he “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life”.

Shalit joined Today as a contributor in 1970 and became arts editor in 1973, later settling in for his segment, Critic’s Corner. When he left the show in 2010, he was one of the last high-profile film critics on a major network.

“What resonated above his unusual appearance was his incredible wit, his remarkable intelligence. But he didn’t pound you over the head with it. He amused you. He enlightened and amused whatever subject he was on,” Guy Ludwig, Shalit’s producer for more than 20 years, wrote in an essay.

It was no coincidence that Chicago critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel’s local “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” movie-review program, Sneak Previews, went national on PBS in the late 1970s and that Today show’s ABC rival, Good Morning America, hired Joel Siegel to be its movie critic in 1981.

“Shalit was instrumental in changing the balance of critical power in America. When he began his ‘Today’ tenure, newspapers and magazines were the primary sources for movie reviews. That’s where cinematic opinion was sparked and shaped,” the Plain Dealer wrote in 2010, calling Shalit “Daniel Boone in a bow tie and Groucho glasses”.