MENANDS — Paul Villani, an actor with a more than half a century of stage and voiceover work who was known for his eclectic interests, eccentric personality and exacting rigor in approaching his craft, died Sunday at home under hospice care after a brief illness. He was 82.
Legendary for a deep, sonorous and precisely controlled voice that he used to dilate on theater, jazz, politics and many other subjects when he wasn’t recording thousands of for commercials, Villani loved to leave late-night phone messages. Peppered with words from the jazz scene and the beatnik era of his teen years, including “cat” and “square” and “Jack,” Villani’s messages were considered by friends, journalists and — when he could locate a number — politicians to be both winning and wearying. When he actually got someone on the phone, the disquisitions were even longer.
“He could talk acting for hours and hours and hours — and he did,” said veteran Albany actor John Romeo, who met Villani when the two were cast in an Albany theater production in the late 1970s. Villani was an original company member of what was then known as the Empire State Youth Theatre Institute. Romeo became a company member in its next incarnation, as the Empire State Institute for the Performing Arts at The Egg in Albany, by which time Villani had left the company. Villani returned to ESIPA as a cast member in four or five more productions with Romeo before it was renamed again, as the New York State Theatre Institute, following a move to the Russell Sage College campus in Troy in 1992. The two remained friends for the next 30 years.
The pair also recorded commercials together, often at Cathedral Sounds Studios in Rensselaer.
“He always wanted to do it right — he wanted it to be good — and he was so determined about it he sometimes pissed people off,” said Romeo.
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