An actress is suing both James Cameron and The Walt Disney Company for alleged unauthorized use of her likeness for the movie Avatar.
Q’orianka Kilcher alleges her likeness was used without her consent or knowledge as the foundation for the character of Neytiri in Avatar.
In a complaint obtained by Variety, Kilcher claims that when she was 14 years old, after appearing as Pocahontas in the 2005 film The New World, Cameron extracted her facial features from a photograph and instructed his designers to use it as the basis for Neytiri, played on-screen by Zoe Saldaña using full-body and facial motion-capture technology.
“Plaintiff never consented to Defendants’ use of her likeness, either in Avatar or in any related product or promotion,” the filing reads.
According to Variety, the complaint alleges Kilcher’s likeness was reproduced via sketches, 3D sculptures, and high-resolution digital models in order to form Neytiri’s appearance.
“Neytiri’s lips, chin, jawline and overall mouth shape … are Q’orianka Kilcher’s,” the complaint states.
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“What Cameron did was not inspiration, it was extraction. He took the unique biometric facial features of a 14-year-old Indigenous girl, ran them through an industrial production process, and generated billions of dollars in profit without ever once asking her permission. That is not filmmaking. That is theft,” Kilcher’s lawyer, Arnold P. Peter of Peter Law Group, told Variety.
“It is deeply disturbing to learn that my face, as a 14-year-old girl, was taken and used without my knowledge or consent to help create a commercial asset that has generated enormous value for Disney and Cameron,” Kilcher said.
According to the filing, months after the 2009 theatrical release of Avatar, a member of Cameron’s staff presented Kilcher with a print of a sketch Cameron had made of the actress, along with a handwritten note that read, “Your beauty was my early inspiration for Neytiri. Too bad you were shooting another movie. Next time.”
“When I received Cameron’s sketch, I believed it was a personal gesture, at most a loose inspiration tied to casting and my activism. Millions of people opened their hearts to ‘Avatar’ because they believed in its message and I was one of them. I never imagined that someone I trusted would systematically use my face as part of an elaborate design process and integrate it into a production pipeline without my knowledge or consent. That crosses a major line. This act is deeply wrong,” Kilcher said.
In 2024, Cameron reportedly publicly identified Kilcher as the inspiration behind a sketch of Neytiri during an interview with French media.
Kilcher is seeking compensatory and punitive damages of an undisclosed amount, as well as “corrective public disclosure,” for the alleged use of her likeness.
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