Award-winning actor Craig McLachlan grabbed his alleged victim’s face during a musical production and left her “pretty upset”, a court has been told.

McLachlan is facing multiple charges, including indecent assault, attempted indecent assault and other assault allegations which coincided with The Rocky Horror Show production.

“She said ‘he grabbed my face hard out there’ or something like that ‘you need to do something’,” the alleged victim told resident director Leah Howard, who recalled the incident in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

“She was pretty upset.”

After the show, Ms Howard spoke to the Gold Logie winner about his behaviour and told him to apologise.

“I just recall just telling him that he had to apologise and that she was scared,” she said.

The director said McLachlan agreed to apologise and said it was because of “frustration” after wardrobe and sound issues.

But the next day the alleged victim spoke to the director and said she wasn’t interested in an apology.

“She said ‘your mate McLachlan just apologised to me’ and I said ‘that’s good’, but she said ‘I didn’t want him to’,” Ms Howard said.

“And I said ‘but why he needs to if you felt the way you did’ and then I just kind of got a bit confused.”

Ms Howard said she passed on the complaint to company manager Sally Greenwood because it was “serious”.

The director said she had known McLachlan for about 20 years because he had previously dated one of her close friends.

While she said they were friends, Ms Howard said she hadn’t spoken to him or his current partner for quite some time.

She also knew the victim for quite some time, the court was told.

-AAP