Stars such as Melanie Griffith, Daryl Hannah and Sharon Stone have all bemoaned the lack of roles for women over 40 in Hollywood in recent years. Now, an anonymous Texas actor has taken the debate one step further: she is suing movie website imdb.com for publishing her real age without her consent.

The actor claims to look much younger than her real age. She says she deliberately failed to disclose her date of birth when she signed up to the Internet Movie Database's "pro" subscription service in 2008, and was therefore surprised to see that someone had added it to her profile. All attempts to have the reference removed from the site were refused by IMDb, she says in her suit, and she subsequently lost out on a number of roles.

"If one is perceived to be 'over the hill,' ie approaching 40, it is nearly impossible for an up-and-coming actress, such as the plaintiff, to get work as she is thought to have less of an 'upside'," the actor's complaint reads. She is seeking $1m or more in punitive damages and $75,000 or more in compensatory damages. She accuses IMDb and its parent company Amazon of breach of contract, fraud, and violation of privacy and consumer protection laws.

The plaintiff, an actor of Asian descent who first began working in Hollywood in 2003, claims she looks too young to be taken seriously by producers looking to cast older parts. "[The] plaintiff has experienced rejection in the industry for each '40-year-old' role for which she has interviewed because she does not and cannot physically portray the role of a 40-year-old woman," the lawsuit says.

The actor's lawyer, John W Dozier Jr, said the suit might put the very existence of the database at risk if it can prove IMDb was in the habit of publishing its own research into actors' circumstances rather than gleaning the information from already existing sources. "The number of claims that could be asserted against them would overwhelm them," he said.

Both IMDb and Amazon have declined to comment on the suit, which was filed at the US district court.