You’re 14. Your face is in the newspaper promoting your breakout role as Pocahontas. Years later, one of the biggest directors on earth hands you a signed sketch and tells you your beauty helped inspire one of the most recognizable characters in movie history.
That moment is now at the centre of a lawsuit aimed at The Walt Disney Company and James Cameron.
James Cameron admitting to stealing Q’orianka Kilcher’s face for the Na’vi in ‘Avatar’ on camera 😂😭 pic.twitter.com/yPgcrz0tKu
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Q’orianka Kilcher has filed a lawsuit against Cameron and Disney, claiming her image was used without consent as the basis for Neytiri in Avatar.
According to a press release, the lawsuit alleges that “one of Hollywood’s most powerful film-makers exploited a young Indigenous girl’s biometric identity and cultural heritage to create a record-breaking film franchise – without credit or compensation to her – through a series of deliberate, non-expressive commercial acts”.
The lawsuit centres around an image of Kilcher published in the Los Angeles Times while promoting the 2005 film The New World, where she portrayed Pocahontas.
Kilcher also describes a meeting with Cameron in 2010 following Avatar’s release. According to the filing, Cameron presented her with a framed and signed sketch of Neytiri featuring the inscription: “Your beauty was my early inspiration for Neytiri. Too bad you were shooting another movie. Next time.”
The actress claims she was never approached to audition for the film and says the full extent of her alleged connection to the character only became clear after seeing an interview on social media last year. In that interview, Cameron reportedly stood beside the original LA Times photo and a sketch of Neytiri, saying: “The actual source for this was a photo in the LA Times, a young actress named Q’orianka Kilcher. This is actually her … her lower face. She had a very interesting face.”
The press release further alleges that the use of her likeness 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 film-making. That is theft.”
Neither Cameron nor Disney had publicly responded.
This could be lucrative for Kilcher, if it goes her way… .released in 2009, Avatar remains the highest-grossing film of all time. It’s earned 2.9 BILLION worldwide! Neytiri, portrayed by Zoe Saldaña, became one of the franchise’s defining characters and returned in Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash.
When inspiration crosses into imitation, where should Hollywood draw the line?
