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Elijah Wood Opens Up About His Experience With Hollywood Child Abuse

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 04:19 PST, May 30, 2016

Elijah Wood has opened up about his experience with child abuse, according to People magazine. The Lord of the Rings star, who began his acting career at the age of eight, admitted that the movie industry is full of “vipers.”

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Elijah Wood said his long acting career taught him there “are a lot of vipers” in Hollywood. And that interview was misinterpreted by many media sources as the British actor’s revelation that he was a victim of child abuse himself.

But Elijah Wood made it clear during the interview that he avoided all that thanks to his mother, who raised him to be “a good human.” The Lord of the Rings actor also compared the increasing number of child abuse reports in the U.S. to the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal in the U.K.

Savile faced hundreds of sexual abuse accusations after his death in 2011. Elijah Wood said that the Savile scandal is “devastating,” since so many people grew up with him.

“Clearly something major was going on in Hollywood. It was all organized. There are a lot of vipers in this industry, people who only have their own interests in mind.”

In fact, Elijah Wood claims he managed to avoid sexual abuse in his childhood thanks to avoiding parties “where that kind of thing was going.” The British actor added that Hollywood presents way too many paths to temptation, which can be difficult to deal with especially if you don’t have a firm foundation from family.

When asked if he thinks sexual abuse is still a problem for the movie industry, Elijah Wood admitted that these things are “probably” still happening in Hollywood. The Lord of the Rings star said that he has been “led down dark paths” to find out that sexual abuse is still a major issue in Hollywood.

“If you’re innocent, you have very little knowledge of the world and you want to succeed, people with parasitic interests will see you as their prey.”

Elijah Wood also complained that so many sexual abuse victims keep silent about sex crimes because they can be easily silenced by “the people in power.” And the tragedy of all that is that sexual abuse victims can be easily “squashed,” while their lives have been already “irreparably damaged.”

And after that interview was misinterpreted as Elijah Wood opening up about his firsthand experience with sexual abuse in Hollywood, the 35-year-old actor released a statement to the Hollywood Reporter a day after the interview, saying his words had been misinterpreted, according to Time.

Elijah Wood’s latest film, The Trust, presented the British actor with the great opportunity to work alongside Hollywood superstar Nicolas Cage, according to Comic Book Resources.

And now the Lord of the Rings star has a few things to say about the living movie legend.

Elijah Wood and Cage play a duo of Las Vegas-based dirty cops, whose lives turn upside down after they discover a personal vault of a big drug lord. When asked by Spinoff whether it was “intimidating” to work alongside Cage, Wood praised his The Trust co-star for being an iconic and extraordinary actor that has remained “so vital for so long.”

Elijah Wood also said of his experience of working with Cage that it was nothing like with other iconic actors he has worked with.

“There’s always a sense of enthusiasm and excitement to work with someone that you admire and a kind of healthy nervousness about meeting those people for the first time. For sure. Nic was something else.”

And finally, most people have noticed by now that there are some “slight” similarities between Elijah Wood and Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe.

A new GIF has thrown further light on the uncanny likeness, showing just how far the similarities really go.

[Photo by Lily Lawrence/Getty Images for Rock & Reilly’s]

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Lord of the Rings Elijah Wood Nicolas Cage Daniel Radcliffe
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