Elijah Wood, the former child actor and star of the Lord of the Rings films, claims that Hollywood has been gripped by cases of sexual abuse similar to the Jimmy Savile scandal in Britain — and it may still be continuing.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Wood, 35, sympathised with British victims of Savile and said: “Jesus, it must have been devastating.”

He said his mother had protected him from abuse when he arrived in Hollywood aged eight, but “I’ve been led down dark paths to realise that these things probably are still happening”.

Wood, who played Frodo Baggins, the hobbit protagonist in the films of JRR Tolkien’s books, said there were “a lot of vipers in this industry . . . there