You could call it life imitating art, except that it is happening in Hollywood, where you will have trouble finding a realistic example of either. All About Eve II is more like it: the stormy drama of a young aspiring actress from nowhere, who dreams of becoming the idol she imitates and ultimately challenges.

In this real-life sequel, however, the star is Demi Moore, not Bette Davis, her rival is the family nanny and the script is being written by lawyers. Kim Tannahill elbowed Monica Lewinsky off the US gossip pages earlier this week when she filed a suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, charging Moore and her husband, Bruce Willis, with assault, fraud and deceit, false imprisonment, civil rights violations and stalking.

Tannahill worked for the couple from 1994 until August 1997, loo king after their daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, for a salary of $24,000, but she had other ambitions. One Moore-Willis supporter recently told the Daily News that Tannahill "dreamed of being Demi. She even cut her hair like Demi."

When she was fired "for spending too much time trying to be an actress", the nanny moved to Los Angeles where she met her lawyer David Myers, an adviser who clearly had the perfect role in mind for his client.

In court papers drawn up by Myers, Tannahill described the strained working conditions caused by the employers' "inattention to their children . . . the deterioration of their marriage, which clearly was `on the rocks' by June 1997, and . . . prescription drug abuse by Ms Moore, which caused her to become extremely paranoid, delusional, temperamental and obsessive."

Most Californians reacted with a collective shrug. Paranoid, delusional, temperamental and obsessive behaviour seems, after all, the least you should expect from a real movie star. "What do you want," one caller to an Los Angeles talk show asked on Tuesday, "Kevin Costner saving the ozone layer?"

There were meatier scenes ahead. Tannahill accused Moore of staging an incident intended to test her discretion, after which she "yelled and screamed" at Tanna hill, threatening "physical harm by stating: `It's scary what I could do to you'." The nanny insisted she was subjected to hours of "verbal beating" while Moore "physically restrained" her. She recalled being "stalked" by Moore on several occasions.

Martin Singer, the lawyer for Moore and Willis, dismissed the allegations as "a form of extortion" and a blatant bid for "media attention" when his clients sued Tannahill in an Idaho court last week for slander, breach of her confidentiality pact and misuse of their personal credit cards.

Anybody who doubts the strength of a Moore-Willis counter-offensive should consider the key players. Demi Moore is a no-nonsense type. Whether she is portraying a Florida stripper or Haw thorne's Hester Prynne, Ms Moore gets $12.5 million a movie when she removes all her clothes and $10 million when she keeps most of them on. It keeps the accounting simple. It also maintains her position as the only movie actress on the Forbes list of top-earning entertainers.

Moore's husband adheres to similarly straightforward artistic principles. Any role requiring a shaved head and a New Jersey accent is fine by Willis, providing the script leaves room for explosions, fireballs or comparable pyrotechnics to occur at five-minute intervals. This approach reduces excess dialogue and over the last three years has earned the actor more than $35 million.

In addition, Planet Hollywood, the restaurant chain partly owned by Willis and Moore, made a $21 million profit last year.

Kim Tannahill cannot be ignorant of the couple's buying power. She may, however, have overlooked Moore's background. A self-described "trailer-park kid", Moore had the kind of upbringing that traditionally produces an endurance fighter. Being named Demetria after a cosmetic spotted by her mother in a magazine advertisement was not an auspicious start, but discovering at 14 years of age that Daddy Guynes was not her natural father was a tougher blow.

Young Demi, a high-school drop-out, got a job at a debt-collection agency and married rock musician Freddy Moore when she was 18. Sporadic modelling led to a part in a TV soap, General Hospital, and minor roles in such forgotten cinema classics as Parasite, a movie about giant slugs.

"She is the highest-paid, most disdained actress in movies," Jack Kroll, film critic of Time magazine observed when Moore recently suffered one box-office failure after another, The Scarlet Letter being the most abysmal and hilarious of all.

However, even her critics agree that for Moore adversity is a stimulant. As GI Jane, she told her sadistic drill instructor to . . . well, let's just say Grace Kelly would have had problems with the line.

As the defendant, Moore is taking a similar attitude to Kim Tannahill, who apparently has a few things left to learn about becoming Demi.