America's sweetheart, the actress Sandra Bullock, is being dragged into an unpleasant legal battle to prove that she is a better parent than her husband’s former wife, the star of more than 100 pornographic movies.

Bullock is backing claims by her husband Jesse James, the television celebrity, that they have made a good home for Sunny, his five-year-old daughter.

His ex-wife Janine Lindemulder, 40, star of such video titles as Mrs Behavin’, Sleeping Booty and Dyke Diner, disagrees. She has just been released from a six-month prison sentence for tax evasion.

When she was in jail in Oregon she reportedly sent her former husband a bitter text message that read: “U win. Sandra finally has her baby — congratulations.”

The tattooed blonde remains in a halfway house in Los Angeles until the end of this year when she can seek custody of her daughter.

James, 40, has launched a pre-emptive legal strike in wealthy Orange county, south of Los Angeles, where all three have beachside homes. He has asked a judge to rule on whether Lindemulder is a fit mother.

“Good cause exists for the court to conduct a review to determine if [the girl] will be safe with [Lindemulder],” he said in a statement to the court. “She should be restrained from allowing the child around pornographers, drug addicts, guns and firearms, felons and other unsafe environments.”

The judge is expected to rule soon on whether Lindemulder, James and Bullock will have to give evidence in person.

James, a heavily tattooed motorbike mechanic who turned his business customising £60,000 bikes for sports stars into a Top Gear-style television programme, admits that he enjoys risky pursuits.

These include riding with Hell’s Angels gangs and a taste for death-defying television stunts. But he says he keeps these far from his family, which includes two teenage children from an earlier marriage.

Bullock denies that the couple, who married in 2005, enjoy a Hollywood lifestyle. “We do every mundane, normal thing that everyone else does. It’s about enjoying what we have,” she said.

Bullock, 45, the star of Speed and Miss Congeniality who is estimated to be worth £100m, has said she wanted to have children, but her late mother persuaded her to put her career first.

James married Lindemulder in 2002 in an episode of his television series Motorcycle Mania, after which she gave up her career. Lindemulder claimed to be “devastated” when he left her for Bullock while she was seven months pregnant with Sunny. She claimed the stress led her to get into trouble with her taxes.

She recently told friends that she wants her child back as she rebuilds her life.

Like many Californian custody cases the outcome may come down to money. James told the court he has a “very high income” while Lindemulder still has to repay £180,000 in taxes and earns £7.20 an hour as a set designer at a photographic studio.

There is hope, however. She is seeking to publish her prison diaries.

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