Former child star Elijah Wood has clarified some comments he reportedly made about Hollywood and pedophilia.
Wood stirred some buzz over the weekend after it was reported he made comments about alleged sex abuse in the industry. The actor, who appeared in his first film when he was 8, was said to have made the comments during a discussion about the Jimmy Savile sex scandal in the United Kingdom.
Savile, a beloved U.K. radio DJ and television star who died in 2011, is believed to have used his fame to sexually abuse an untold number of people, including children.
“You all grew up with Savile — Jesus, it must have been devastating,” Wood, 35, reportedly told the Sunday Times in an interview. “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.”
The “Lord of the Rings” star reportedly went on to talk about the “darkness in the underbelly” and how his family protected him during his early years in the industry. The paper said he firmly believed that such abuse still goes on today.
“From my reading and research, I’ve been led down dark paths to realize that these things probably are still happening,” he was quoted as saying. “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.”
But on Tuesday Wood used his official Twitter account to clear up some of what was reported.
“The Sunday Times interviewed me about my latest film but the story became about something else entirely,” he tweeted. “It prompted a number of false and misleading headlines.”
Wood continued that he had just seen a documentary about the subject and was speaking from what he has learned, not from personal experience.
“Let me be clear: This subject of child abuse is an important one that should be discussed and properly investigated,” he tweeted. “But as I made absolutely clear to the writer, I have no first hand experience or observation of the topic so I cannot speak with any authority beyond articles I have read and films I have seen.”