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Avatar director James Cameron is being sued by Q’orianka Kilcher, who played Pocahontas in 2005’s The New World, over her allegation that he based a key character on her image.
Kilcher, who was 14 when she starred opposite Colin Farrell in Terrence Malick’s film, claims that Cameron told her he based the appearance of Zoe Saldana’s character Neytiri on a photograph of her.
In the lawsuit, seen by NBC News, Kircher’s representatives argue that “this case exposes how one of Hollywood’s most powerful filmmakers 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 Independent has approached Kilcher and Cameron’s lawyers for further comment.
The suit goes on to claim that the photograph of Kircher was the basis for countless sketches and designs used to create Neytiri, and the result was “a hugely lucrative film franchise that presented itself as sympathetic to Indigenous struggles, all while silently exploiting a real Indigenous youth behind the scenes.”
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Kilcher claims she did not know she was the inspiration for the character until she met Cameron at an event in 2010, the year after the release of the first Avatar movie.
During the event, he told her he had a gift for her in his office: a signed sketch of Neytiri by Cameron himself, along with a note that read: “Your beauty was my early inspiration for Neytiri. Too bad you were shooting another movie. Next time.”
The suit further claims that Kilcher was ultimately never offered a role in the franchise, despite her agent’s best efforts.
“When I received Cameron’s sketch, I believed it was a personal gesture, at most a loose inspiration tied to casting and my activism,” Kilcher said in a statement.
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She continued: “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.”
According to the lawsuit, Cameron first saw Kilcher when a photo advertising The New World ran in the LA Times. He reportedly admitted as much in an interview, stating: “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.”
In the suit, Kilcher is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, disgorgement of profits attributable to the use of Kilcher’s likeness, injunctive relief, and corrective public disclosure.
