Actor Q’orianka Kilcher (right) has accused ‘Avatar’ director James Cameron of stealing her likeness from a photograph to create the character of Neytiri | Photo credit: Court documents

An actress has accused the director James Cameron of stealing her likeness from a photograph of her as a teenager to create an Avatar character in a new lawsuit.

U.S. actress Q’orianka Kilcher, who is of Indigenous Peruvian descent, alleges that Cameron “extracted her facial features” from a photograph of her portraying Pocahontas in Terrence Malick’s 2005 film The New World when she was 14-years-old.

According to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in California, Kilcher says her likeness in the photo was taken without her knowledge and later used as the basis for Neytiri, the digitally created blue-skinned Na’vi warrior princess in Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar franchise.

According to the complaint, which was cited in a report by NBC News , Cameron directed his design team to use it as the foundation for the character of Neytiri,…