“He grabbed both my arms and screamed in my face, ‘DON’T EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN!’” Phillips writes. “And he threw me to the ground. Flat on my back. Wind knocked out of me.”

Members of the wider Freaks and Geeks cast and crew were horrified, Phillips says, and her co-star Linda Cardellini told her to call her manager about what Franco had done.

The next day, Franco reportedly apologised for his actions after being ordered to do so by Freaks and Geeks’ directors and producers, although Phillips says he was never actually punished for his alleged behaviour.

Phillips recently spoke out about another assault from her past, this time sexual rather than physical. Amid the allegations of sexual assault made against the now-US Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Phillips wrote on Instagram that she had been raped as a young teenager.

“This is me at 14. The age I was raped. It’s taken me 25 years to say those words,” she wrote in the caption accompanying an old photo.

“I wrote about it in my book. I finally told my parents and sister about it 4 months ago. Today is the day we are silent no more. All of us.

“I’m scared to post this,” she continued. “I can’t imagine what Dr [Christine Blasey] Ford is feeling right now.”

Busy Phillips says James Franco assaulted her when they were in Freaks and Geeks