In the city of Murray, the US state of Utah, last Saturday, the life of the most famous person with autism, a 58-year-old local resident, who was the prototype of the protagonist of the Oscar-winning film Rain Man, was cut short
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Peak has been in severe pain in recent weeks and suffered a heart attack on Saturday.
Kim Peek was born on November 11, 1951. Nine months after the boy was born, doctors told the parents that their son would grow up mentally retarded and unable to walk or speak.
But this terrible news did not make Kim's mom and dad abandon him - they loved the baby, took care of him and developed his skills.
At the age of one and a half, the child has demonstrated unique abilities: he learned to read and immediately remembered everything he read. Since then, he read everything: the Old and New Testaments, Shakespeare and thousands of other books. And he knew them by heart.
“He had an amazing depth and breadth of knowledge and an incredible memory,” recalls Daniel Christensen, professor of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of Utah. “He was unique. I don't know if there will ever be a person like Kim."
Real fame awaited Peak after screenwriter Barry Morrow found out about his miraculous abilities in the early 1980s. He was so inspired by this autistic genius that he soon wrote the script for the film Rain Man. In 1989, this picture received four Oscars at once.
Rain Man tells about a young man Charlie Bebbit (played by Tom Cruise), who unexpectedly found out that the entire fortune of his deceased millionaire father was bequeathed to his eldest son, his brother Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), an autistic patient, whose existence Charlie had no idea … The outraged guy kidnaps his brother from the hospital and intends to get his share of the inheritance. During the trip, the sick, but talented Raymond helps his brother solve his financial problems, and Charlie is sincerely attached to his brother.
