Ben Fellows (pictured) spoke about how he was preyed upon by actors, directors and producers
Ben Fellows, who appeared in Eastenders, The Bill and Starlight Express before becoming an award-winning filmmaker, spoke last night about how he was preyed upon by actors, directors and producers.
Mr Fellows's testimony will pile more pressure on the BBC in the wake of the Jimmy Savile sex scandal.
He said: "Once I'd entered the entertainment industry proper I ran a gauntlet of paedophiles - both at the BBC and other television production companies and also in theatres, as well as commercial photo shoots.
"In fact, almost every production I was involved with I was targeted in some way or another."
Mr Fellows, 38, who trained at the Royal Shakespeare Company, claims that as a teenager he was asked to take his top off and pose for photographs before being propositioned by men and women "all the time".
On one occasion, he claims, he was chased around a dressing room by a naked actor at the Theatre Royal in London's West End. Mr Fellows's graphic account of life as an aspiring actor is the latest in a series of revelations to emerge after 60 women alleged Savile had raped or indecently assaulted them - some in the late DJ's BBC dressing room.
The BBC's director-general George Entwistle has promised an independent investigation into practices at the corporation in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
However, Mr Fellows's account of life as a child star appears to indicate that predatory behaviour was commonplace far more recently.
He said: "The truth is there are paedophiles everywhere in the entertainment industry."
Last night children's campaigner Esther Rantzen received support from Mark Wood, chairman of trustees for NSPCC and ChildLine, after it was claimed she was told about Jimmy Savile 18 years ago but failed to act.
Yesterday the Daily Express published an exclusive interview with Ms Rantzen in which she said the Savile sex scandal could undermine her "life's work" protecting children.
Mr Wood said: "Very few people have done so much for vulnerable children. In my view she is irreplaceable."
"The truth is there are paedophiles everywhere in the entertainment industry."
Clearly the same can be said regarding a number of youthful performers in the United States, both past and present.
For example, Michael Jackson ---> It is clear that his wearing of a distinctive glove and repetitively grabbing his crotch in the course of performances was an unconscious reenactment of recurrent, probably ritualized, sexual molestation and abuse. Jackson was known to millions as the originator of such a dance expression, yet he was a victim incapable of giving auditory expression to the expression's own deeper meaning. Moreover, the behavior - culturally and through time - became normalized.