The women came to the acting school with hopes of developing their skills, furthering their careers and working with its celebrity founder, James Franco, the film and television star.

Instead, these women say, Mr. Franco and his partners subjected them to sexually exploitative auditions and film shoots, all while promising them roles in movies that never materialized or were never released.

In a lawsuit filed on Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, two former students of an acting school that Mr. Franco helped create say that the now-defunct program was little more than a scheme to provide him and his male collaborators with a pool of young female performers that they could take advantage of.

The two women, Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, say in the lawsuit that Mr. Franco and his partners “engaged in widespread inappropriate and sexually charged behavior towards female students by sexualizing their power as a teacher and an employer by dangling the opportunity for roles in their projects.”