A production coordinator for Desert Warrior says that between the August 2011 wrap and the September 2012 surprise only one cast member—Cindy Lee Garcia, who spent two days playing a bit part in the film—contacted him regularly, about every other month, to check on the film’s status.

Garcia lives in Bakersfield, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from L.A. across a vast landscape of barren mountains that looks like Galilee on steroids. She has asked me to meet her on the outskirts of town, in front of a defunct Peet’s Coffee shop, in a wide-open area with long views in almost every direction. As I arrive, her first words are “I’m in a pissy mood.” When I ask why, she says, “You would be too if your life got turned upside down! I got used. I got made to look like a bigot, which—I’ve been preaching against bigotry all my life.”

Sharp-featured, dressed head to toe in black, her red-streaked black hair drawn back in a heavy ponytail, Garcia immediately offers that she is “a preacher of the Gospel” who has “been supporting the widows and orphans of Botswana for many years.” In 2009, after her husband “had his face ripped off” in a 20-foot fall at the power plant where he worked, she went back to work to support him by acting in low-budget movies, “especially action/adventure, because I have a gift for that.” Desert Warrior was her second film.

Since September, she has put her acting career, along with the rest of her life, on hold. She has moved her church (a non-denominational evangelical congregation), moved to a different house, and stopped babysitting for her grandchildren, for fear they’ll be murdered, along with her, now that “a fatwa has been put out against me.” One Egyptian cleric has in fact issued an online call for the deaths of everyone involved with the movie, cast included. It’s unclear how much power this imam wields—he had never previously been mentioned in the Western press. Garcia is not taking any chances. She says that a private security firm is now providing 24-hour protection for her, pro bono.

I ask, “Are they watching us now?”

“Ohhh, yes,” she answers. In addition to what she calls “my fatwa,” Garcia says, she has received “many death threats.”

“What kind of death threats?”

“Death threats!”

“By e-mail, phone, letter, or—?”

“Death threats!”

She says she called Nakoula the day the movie hit the fan, to ask him, “Why did you do this to me?”

As she recalls, he answered, “Cindy, tell the world that you are innocent!” She has thrown herself into the task. In one month, working with a writer and two editors, she says she nearly finished writing a book about her experience, to be called The Innocence of Cindy Garcia. Though her motion to have the video removed from YouTube was denied by a federal judge, Garcia’s lawyer says she hopes to file an appeal, and the actress intends to keep fighting. She says that she has called the F.B.I. “more than once,” and that “they ignored me. And that is wrong. I want to know why my government is not defending Cindy Garcia.” A few minutes later, she climbs into her vehicle—the vanity license plate proclaims her faith in God—and drives away.

Garcia’s fundamental complaint against Nakoula (“I got used”) forms the basis for what legal experts see as the most striking aspect of her case: the unprecedented claim that a performer’s appearance on film or video is his or her intellectual property. Garcia is asserting copyright interest in The Innocence of Muslims, since she says she did not sign a release granting Nakoula the right to use her image. (Garcia’s suit includes expert testimony from a forensic analyst who worked on the case of the Zodiac Killer, asserting that Garcia’s handwriting and signatures on the releases provided by Nakoula are forged.) She wants to use that claim of ownership to force YouTube to take down the video. If her argument gains traction in court, it could render questionable the use of anyone’s image in online video without that person’s explicit permission. Garcia’s suit also alleges that Nakoula engaged in fraud, unfair business practices, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. And for good measure Garcia has also filed suit against all of the individuals who have reposted the video to YouTube.