Brian Cox thinks Hollywood is the "worst place in the world" to raise girls.

The 'Succession' actor - who has Alan, 52, and Margaret, 45, with first wife Caroline Burt and Orson, 20, and Torin, 18, with spouse Nicole Ansari - insisted the Californian neighbourhood isn't as glamorous as it seems because there are a lot of "very sad people" desperate to make it big in the movie industry and it "exacerbates" the pressures on young women.

He said: "We have this idea of Hollywood, but it’s simply untrue. There are a lot of very sad people there trying to make a buck. It’s a very difficult place to live. And Hollywood is the worst place in the world to raise female children. There are so many pressures on young women already, and it just exacerbates them.”

Asked if he means pressure to look a certain way or to be sexualised, he replied: "Exactly".

The 76-year-old star also blasted the "tokenistic" way people give time to particular issues without actually really caring about the cause.

He told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: “Let me tell you my Hollywood story. I got a Golden Globe [in 2020], which was lovely. Then, I was invited to this MeToo meeting. I arrived late, so I had to stand at the back while all these rather intense Hollywood women were listening to Ronan Farrow talk about the work he had done [exposing the sexual misconduct of Harvey Weinstein]. Then it finished.

"Everyone turned around and immediately took out their devices and started filming me, walking up to me and saying, ‘Can you tell us to f*** off?’. I thought, ‘Is this appropriate? This is a MeToo meeting.’

"This is the problem – that people do things on a tokenistic level. I find that questionable.”

While Brian raised his two youngest children in the US, he is now back in the UK and pessimistic about the future of America.

He said: “I thought America was a great society to be part of because of its egalitarian principles. But have those principles been practised? Have they f***! I think there could very easily be an uprising in the United States.”