The Iranian man who inspired the Tom Hanks film The Terminal has died at the Paris airport in which he lived for almost two decades.
Merhan Karimi Nasseri died after a heart attack in Terminal 2F of Charles de Gaulle Airport, according to an official with the Paris airport authority.
Police and a medical team treated him but were not able to save him, the official said. The official was not authorised to be publicly named.
Mr Karimi Nasseri, believed to have been born in 1945, lived in the airport's Terminal 1 from 1988 until 2006, first in legal limbo because he lacked residency papers and later by choice.
He had planned to settle in the UK but claimed his papers were lost when his briefcase was allegedly stolen; however this has been disputed.
He was returned to France from London by British immigration officials. Because his entry to the airport was legal and he had no country of origin to be returned to, he began living in Terminal 1.
Court cases in the following years ruled that while he couldn't legally be expelled from the airport, he also couldn't be given permission to enter France.
In 2003 Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks' production company paid Mr Karimi Nasseri $US250,000 ($372,970) for the rights to his life story.
His stay in the airport ended when he was hospitalised in 2006, and he went on to live in a Paris shelter.
Airport officials said he had been living in the airport again in recent weeks; however it is unclear what prompted him to return.
His story was also the inspiration for a 1994 French film Lost in Transit, as well as several documentaries, short stories and an opera.
ABC/AP
