The tallest man in America has died of heart disease aged 38, his grieving family have said.
Igor Vovkovinskiy, a 7ft 8" Ukrainian-American actor, died in hospital at 10.17pm on Friday his mum, an ICU nurse, said in a Facebook post.
She said that his family were there by his side until the end and that his last dinner was a piece of Kiev cake and Fanta.
In the post she said: "A few hours before his death, he was accompanied by [older brother] Oleh's wife Alla and children.
"Igor was glad to see them, and although it was difficult for him to speak, he tried to joke about his nephew Andriy, whether he had learned the Ukrainian language in a month in Ukraine."
She also shared a final picture as she gave her son a hug before his death.
Igor, who has appeared in several films - notably the 2011 comedy Hall Pass - had already revealed that he was to undergo an operation to fix a valve condition he was born with.
His height is said to be due to a tumour pressing on his pituitary gland, which causes his body to release excessive amounts of growth hormone.
His older brother, Oleh Ladan, told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that Igor was a celebrity when he arrived from Ukraine because of his size and the then-Cold War of the late 1980s.
But he said his younger brother "would have rather lived a normal life than be known."
CBS News reports that when he was 27, he went to New York City where he was declared America's tallest living person by a Guinness World Records adjudicator.
He edged out a sheriff's deputy in Virginia by just one-third of an inch.
In 2012 he put out a call for help to cover the estimated $16,000 cost for specially made shoes that wouldn't cause him crippling pain.
At the time, he said he hadn't owned a pair for years that fit his feet. Donations poured in and he ended up with more than double the target.
He was born September 8, 1982, in Bar, Ukraine, to Vovkovinska and Oleksandr Ladan, according to Ranfranz and Vine Funeral Home, which is holding a memorial service on Saturday.
