PARIS -- Michael Jackson was gifted with a talent for dance amply illustrated by his famous moonwalk dance routine inspired both by urban life and late French master of mime Marcel Marceau.

"There was a mutual admiration between Michael Jackson and Marcel Marceau," Elena Serra, who worked with the king of mime for 20 years, told AFP.

"Marceau said of Michael Jackson that he was a born mime artist, which was also what he'd said of Charlie Chaplin, because of his easy physical movement, his ability to decompose movements, his understanding. I think Marceau was impressed by him."

Marceau, who died aged 84 in 2007 and was extremely popular with US audiences, "would often recount how Michael Jackson used to go see him perform when he was around 13 or 14. He told him once backstage that the inspiration behind the moonwalk was Marceau's Walking against the Wind."

The pop star's backward moonwalk first surfaced in a 1983 performance of "Billie Jean" during a television show.

Jackson, who praised Marceau for appearing to defy the laws of gravity, once said the move of going backwards while appearing to go forwards was based on dance moves by children in Harlem at the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s.

In 1995, Jackson and Marceau filmed a joint mime routine but a plan to work together never materialized due to the US star's health problems, Serra said.