20th Century Studios
James Cameron and The Walt Disney Company are being sued for unlawfully using the likeness of actress Q’orianka Kilcher in the creation of the Neytiri character in Avatar.
Avatar is one of the most successful franchises in movie history; one that spawned a marketing empire of games, toys, and theme park rides.
The first film hit screens in 2009 and grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide, while it was followed by hugely successful sequels The Way of Water and Fire and Ash.
But a new lawsuit is taking Avatar mastermind James Cameron to task for allegedly using an actress’s likeness without her knowledge or consent.
The New World star Q’orianka Kilcher is suing James Cameron and Disney
New Line Cinema
In the complaint – viewed by Variety – Q’orianka Kilcher alleges that after she played Pocahontas in 2006 movie The New World, James Cameron extracted her facial features from an LA Times photo, then told his design team to use it as the foundation for Avatar character Neytiri.
According to the suit, Kilcher visited Cameron’s office months after the release of the first Avatar, and was presented with a sketch that the director had drawn, alongside a handwritten note that said, “Your beauty was my early inspiration for Neytiri. Too bad you were shooting another movie. Next time.”
Kilcher then realised exactly how her image was used via a 2024 interview that circulated in 2025, where Cameron stands in front of a sketch of Neytiri, and says: “The actual source for this was a photo in the L.A. Times, a young actress named Q’orianka Kilcher. This is actually her…her lower face. She had a very interesting face.”
Disney
Explaining her reasons for bringing the suit, Kilcher says: “When I received Cameron’s sketch, I believed it was a personal gesture, at most a loose inspiration tied to casting and my activism.
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“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.”
She adds: “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.”
New Line Cinema
Kilcher’s lead counsel, Arnold P. Peter, says of the suit: “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.”
Lightstorm Entertainment and several other visual effects companies are also named in the suit, with the complaint seeking “compensatory and punitive damages, disgorgement of profits attributable to the use of Kilcher’s likeness, injunctive relief, and corrective public disclosure.”
Variety has reached out to Cameron and Disney for comment, while you can head here to see where Avatar placed on our list of best sci-fi movies ever.
