Elijah Wood was just eight when he arrived in Hollywood, the blue-eyed son of Iowa delicatessen owners. He had been modelling in Midwestern shopping centres for four years when his mother brought him to California to launch a career in show business. Long before Peter Jackson cast him as Frodo Baggins, the hobbit protagonist of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Wood was a child star. He took the lead in a remake of the dolphin film Flipper and before that shared top billing with Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son.

Now he knows he was lucky to escape childhood unharmed. Allegations that powerful figures in Hollywood have been sheltering child abusers have become impossible to ignore in recent years. During the past decade several