Hollywood's new darling Jean Dujardin was in trouble back in France after the Oscar frontrunner's face appeared on the streets of Paris between a woman's legs in a poster denounced as sexist.

France's advertising regulator ARPP said the posters degraded women and requested them to be removed just days after they went up to advertise a racy comedy about male adultery.

Poster for the film Les Infideles (The Players) featuring Jean Dujardin. The caption reads: "I'm going into a meeting".

The French internet was buzzing with speculation that the controversy could ruin Dujardin's chances to be the first Frenchman to win a best actor Oscar later this month for his role in The Artist, a silent black and white movie.

Dujardin was famous in France but little known abroad until the release last year of The Artist, a tribute to the silent movie era in which a star battles to save his career after it is torpedoed by the arrival of the "talkies".