Will and Jada's Dirty Laundry

Fri., Sep. 19, 2003 9:30 AM PDT by Lia Haberman

Good help is hard to find.

Will and Jada Pinkett Smith find themselves in a domestic dilemma as their former housekeeper sues to recoup about 1,640 hours of overtime pay and for being fired after she complained to the celebrity couple, reports the Associated Press.

In her lawsuit, filed September 11 in Ventura Superior Court, Marilu Cooley said she kept house for her high-profile employers and lived on their estate for four and a half years. During that time, Cooley alleges she often worked more than 40 hours a week.

For the first two years, Cooley was compensated for her efforts with overtime pay but in March 1999 she claims the Man in Black megastar and his missus stopped paying her overtime and instead promised a $25,000 annual bonus (only in Hollywood, kids).

Cooley said the bonus never materialized and, after she complained about it, the Smiths tossed her out with the trash in October 2001.

The Bad Boy star's publicist refused to comment on the suit while a call to his attorney was not returned.

According to the lawsuit, Cooley earned $1,000 a week to clean house. While there is no mention of how much she was paid for overtime, the canned cleaning woman is seeking at least $175,000 in damages.

This isn't the first time the Smiths have waged battle with their domestic help.

Last summer, the winsome twosome dispatched their attorneys to a Los Angeles court to request a restraining order against a disgruntled former employee they claimed was stalking and harassing them and--even worse--targeting their two young children.

According to court papers, Mike Cooley and his wife worked for the Smiths for several years--Cooley serving as a caretaker on the Smith's Los Angeles-area estate and his wife as the kids' nanny. The couple lived on the Smiths' property until 2001, when Cooley and his wife were fired for reasons unspecified in the complaint.

The termination allegedly set Cooley off and he threatened to expose the family's dirty laundry to the National Enquirer and other press "unless plaintiffs pay outrageous and unwarranted sums of money" to Cooley and his wife. The former groundsman then stepped it up a notch, purportedly stalking the Smith kids, Jaden and Willow, at a neighborhood park.

The caretaker denied the allegations.