She was the celebrity soapie pinup girl of the 90s, a household name, starring in Neighbours, E Street, Paradise Beach and Home and Away, but today Melissa Bell is in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

It's not only Bell's star that's fallen. The former actress is also falling desperately behind in rent, owing nearly $6,500 to landlord Michael Callus.

Now she's being thrown out of her rental property, and the issue is going all the way to court.

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Her behaviour has worried Callus and his heavily pregnant wife.

“My wife is very distraught about this. She’s also seven months pregnant, so it’s a critical phase in her pregnancy,” he said.

“It’s very basic: just pay the rent each week. We’ve offered our services many times in order to repair anything that’s gone wrong, I think we're fantastic landlords, but sometimes you find people who take the mickey out of you,” Callus said.

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Ten months ago the young couple bought their first investment property, a heritage-listed, inner-city house. They rented it to Bell and her family soon after.

“My wife and I recognised the name, had a bit of a giggle, but we just signed the contract,” he said.

However they soon regretted their decision.

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“We installed a brand new washing machine, and she was provided with a manual of how to use the machine. She's misused it within the first three months by over-filling the machine, and blocking the pump,” he said.

Callus got the machine fixed, but “she's now saying the dishwasher is too hard to operate and has been broken for a longer period of time - most of the time she's been there. She's never, at any stage, made this aware to us, and she’s now claiming she’s spending $150 a week in dry-cleaning - this is after we’ve repaired the unit,” he alleged.

Callus says the already erratic rental payments have started falling behind. “Some of the payments fall well below the weekly rent - we’ve got payments here that are half of what it should be, and a quarter of what it should be.”

On top of the rent, Callus also believes Bell read his mortgage statement after it was accidentally sent to the rental property, and opened by one of her children.

“She's found we've made all the repayments, and she's used that as an excuse not to pay our rent, and withhold rent. This is not the kind of behaviour you expect from someone. She signed the agreement, nobody put a gun to her head, and she should pay what she's supposed to pay.”

Callus and Bell have ended up at the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal for an independent hearing with a mediator, and it's the one place that just might be able to solve their dispute.

Bell spoke to Today Tonight off camera, but refused an interview. She's lodged a counter claim of her own with the Tribunal, including compensation for pain and suffering.

For Callus the Tribunal provided some relief. “We're going to get the bond of $4000. We're still owed $2,500 in rent, but it’s adjusted and will be paid over twenty weeks. But that's not enforceable either, so we’ve got a long way to go,” he said.

In the meantime Callus is due to get the keys back late today. He has this warning to other landlords: “avoid celebrities at all cost. Avoid those people with that kind of complex, that believe they’re above everyone else, and just get someone ordinary to rent the property.”