Actress Rose McGowan has filed a federal lawsuit alleging Harvey Weinstein and two of his former lawyers engaged in racketeering to silence her and derail her career before she accused him of rape.

The suit names as defendants Weinstein, attorneys David Boies and Lisa Bloom and their law firms, and Black Cube, an Israeli intelligence firm hired by Weinstein.

It alleges the defendants conspired to defraud, smear and marginalise McGowan as she was preparing to name Weinstein during the run-up to the explosion of the #MeToo movement late in 2017. The suit follows a pair of recent books that detail Weinstein and his team’s efforts to keep his accusers quiet.

“Harvey Weinstein was able to perpetrate and cover up decades of violence and control over women because he had a sophisticated team working on his behalf to systematically silence and discredit his victims,” McGowan said. “My life was upended by their actions.”

Weinstein’s attorney Phyllis Kupferstein said McGowan is “a publicity seeker looking for money” and her suit is meritless.

“From the moment she sought a $6m (€5.4m) payout in return for not making these baseless allegations, which we rejected at the time, we knew she was waiting for an opportune time such as this to begin her suit,” Ms Kupferstein said.

McGowan (46), known for her role in the ‘Scream’ franchise, was one of the earliest and most prominent of dozens of women to accuse Weinstein of sexual misconduct.

She had been tweeting in 2017 she was preparing to name her rapist in a forthcoming memoir ‘Brave’, published the following year.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants used spies posing as women’s rights advocates and journalists to obtain a copy of the memoir, illegally recorded her conversations, and smeared her to those in the entertainment industry who were working on projects with her.

Hers is one of several lawsuits, along with criminal charges, against Weinstein stemming from the sexual misconduct allegations.

The former movie mogul denies all allegations of non-consensual sex.

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