OC star Mischa Barton has been ordered to pay $273,000 for ditching a film she was working on

Mischa Barton on the set of hit series The OC. Photo / Supplied

Mischa Barton has been ordered to pay US $200,000 (NZ $273,000) after she ditched a movie to go on holiday.

The 30-year-old actress will have to pay out the hefty sum to screenwriter Daniel Lief after he sued her when she bailed on his movie Promoted, for which she had been cast in the lead role.

Lief - who decided to sue the Notting Hill actress when he saw pictures of her on social media travelling around Europe - claims the delay in production and the need to recast the lead role cost him more than US $300,000, TMZ reports.

Meanwhile, Mischa has found herself involved in another big legal dispute after she has accused her estranged mother Nuala Barton of deliberately delaying the sale of the Beverly Hills home they both own by making sure potential buyers couldn't access the house.

And it is not the first time Mischa has taken legal action against her mother after previously filing court papers to recoup "loss of earnings" she claims she has suffered.

A source said: "She is heartbroken by this, and she didn't want to do it. She hates the attention, but she didn't have a choice.

"When she said to her mom, 'I'm going to have to sue you for the rights to what I own,' her mom said, 'Fine, get out of the house. You will never sue us.' This was two years ago. And [Mischa] got the point where she said, 'I don't care.'"