Home-grown Hollywood star Rebel Wilson’s “world collapsed” when a series of “grubby articles” in a women’s magazine painted her as a fake and a liar, a Melbourne court has heard.

The Supreme Court of Victoria heard on Monday that Wilson was “cut to the core” when she discovered 1.5 million people had read an online article alleging she’d lied about her age, name and childhood to further her acting career.

Wilson is suing Bauer Media, publisher of Woman’s Day, for defamation over a campaign of eight articles published in three days during 2015.

Wilson claims the Woman’s Day article from May 2015, with the headline Just who is the REAL Rebel? intimated she was a “serial liar who has invented fantastic stories in order to make it in Hollywood”.

In his opening statement to an all-female jury, her lawyer Matthew Collins QC, claimed the articles were timed to cause maximum damage to the 37-year-old actor.

The stories, he said, coincided with the pinnacle of Wilson’s career, during the release of Pitch Perfect 2, in which Wilson had a starring role.

The Bridesmaids star flew to Melbourne from the US for the three-week trial, and was present in court on Monday accompanied by her sister Anna, 25.

Dr Collins told the jury about Wilson’s working-class Sydney childhood and the hardships she’d faced in making it in Hollywood, years after she’d had a dream about winning an Oscar while ill with malaria.

“She is extraordinarily talented. But her success is the result of almost two decades of very hard work,” Dr Collins said.

“Rebel Wilson is an Australian success story.”

Her dreams were shattered when Bauer Media published “grubby articles” that defamed her, he said.

“She thought she’d never been hit with such nastiness, coincided to time with the pinnacle of her career.

He told the court how the actor, whose first notable role in the Australian landscape was SBS comedy series Fat Pizza, was subsequently fired from a number of movie roles. 

She says Bauer Media damaged her reputation by printing articles alleging she had used a fake name, claimed she was 29 when in fact she was 36, and had lied about her background — all in the name of boosting circulation, he alleged.

Dr Collins said the articles “tore down an Australian star in order to sell magazines”.

Speaking outside the Supreme Court of Victoria last Friday, Wilson said she believed it was “really important, that the truth comes out”.

She told reporters she had not been able to audition for movies because of her pending trial.

The trial is expected to run for several weeks.