Man behind Spielberg film The Terminal dies at Paris airport
Archive image: Merhan Karimi Nasseri sits among his belongings in Terminal 1 of Roissy Charles De Gaulle Airport
Source: dpa/Michel Euler
The Iranian refugee who lived for 18 years at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and who inspired Steven Spielberg to create his film “Terminal” is dead. Mehran Karimi Nasseri died of natural causes in Terminal 2 F of the airport on Saturday afternoon.
Dhe Iranian who inspired Steven Spielberg’s film The Terminal by living at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris has died. Airport authority sources said Merhan Karimi Nasseri died after suffering a heart attack around noon on Saturday in Terminal 2F.
Karimi Nasseri is said to have been born in 1945. During a stopover in 1988, the Iranian lost his papers in the transit area. He could no longer prove his refugee status and was now not allowed to travel further or leave the airport. He then set himself up in Terminal 1. For years he tried in vain to get admission in several European countries. In 1999 he got a visa for France but stayed in his alcove under an airport escalator where he had made himself at home.
It was not until 2006 that he left the airport for a hospital stay and then lived in a home. Nasseri’s story inspired Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film Terminal, starring Tom Hanks. With the money he got for the film, Nasseri moved to a hotel. For a few weeks, however, he had been living in the airport again and always sat in the same place with his belongings in a trolley, airport employees reported to the newspaper Le Parisien.
Recently he has hardly spoken and stared into emptiness. After the death of the “terminal man,” as he called himself in an autobiographical novel, the airport covered his seat with a white sheet.