Iranian man who inspired Steven Spielberg film "The Terminal" dies at Paris airport
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Photo courtesy of AP
Paris: An Iranian man who lived for18 years in Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport died on Saturday.
Mehran Karimi Nasseri whose life largely inspired the Steven Spielberg film "The Terminal" died after a heart attack in the airport's Terminal 2F around midday, Associated Press reported.
Police and a medical team rushed to help him but were not able to save him.
Nasseri started to live in the airport from 1988 until 2006 first over legal issues.
Later on Nasseri called the airport his home by choice sleeping on a red plastic bench.
He made friends with airport workers, used staff facilities and spent time reading magazines, writing diaries and watching the flow of passengers.
Nasseri soon became a celebrity among passengers and staff nick named him Lord Alfred.
In 1999 he told the Associated Press that he would eventually leave the airport.
Smoking a pipe on his bench, the report said he was "looking frail with long thin hair, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks."
Born in 1945 to Iranian father and a British mother in Soleiman, a part of Iran then under British jurisdiction, Nasseri went to study in England in 1974.
Up on his return to Iran, he was imprisoned and later expelled from country without passport for protesting against the Shah administration.