A former model has filed a 10 million dollar lawsuit against the makers of hit movie 'Couples Retreat', claiming that her bikini photo was used in a "sexual and degrading context".

According to the New York Post, in papers filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court, Irina Krupnik said she was horrified to discover her photo was used as a "masturbatory prop" for star Jon Favreau.

Krupnik, now a makeup artist, claims she "only learned of the defendants' lascivious use of her photo in the film" after it was released in theatres.

"That photo was taken nearly 10 years ago for a modelling job when Krupnik, a native of the former Soviet Union, was just 21 years old," the Daily Telegraph quoted the suit as stating.

It also said that Krupnik was unaware that the bikini shot would be used in a "sexual and degrading context" in a big budget Hollywood movie a decade later.

'Couples Retreat' is a comedy about four couple trying to work out their differences at a resort in Bora Bora.

The suit said in one scene Favreau's "overweight, unhappily married male character" uses a photo of Krupnik "to masturbate while his wife is in the washroom".

Favreau, "playing a character at least twice the age of Ms. Krupnik in the photo, waits until his wife leaves their hotel room before lifting his sleeveless T-shirt over his prominent belly.

He then liberally lubricates himself while leering at the image of the youthful Ms Krupnik on a beach, a scenario apparently intended to be humorous".

Krupnik, however, was not amused to find herself as a fantasy object for Favreau's "much older, desiccated and overweight character" to "pleasure himself", the suit said, noting that the scene "would be a crime if Favreau attempted it on a New York City subway".

Krupnik, who quit modelling years ago and became a top makeup artist, Vogue Magazine dubbed her the "Brow Queen" in 2004, found out about her movie debut from "clients and acquaintances who viewed the movie, recognized her and notified her that her picture was being used in this tawdry and shocking context".

Those "clients and acquaintances, and other viewers, reasonably but falsely understood from the publication of Krupnik's photograph ... that is she is the type of person who would agree to having her photograph and likeness used publicly as an object for masturbation".

Krupnik's lawyer, Tom Mullaney, said Universal Studios, which created and distributed the movie, should have used somebody who wanted to be in the movie.

"Certainly NBC Universal has the resources to do that," Mullaney said, adding what happened to his client is "just not right".

He acknowledged that his client had signed a general release at the time the picture was taken, but she'd never imagined it would be used in a "quasi-pornographic context".

The suit charges the company with invading Krupnik's privacy and defamation, and seeks 10 million dollars in damages for her "great humiliation, embarrassment, emotional distress, shame, mortification and injury to her reputation and career". (ANI)