Hollywood star James McAvoy has stepped into the row about posh actors, warning that a wealthy elite running the arts can be "damaging for society."

The Glasgow-born actor who paid his way through drama school by working in a bakery, said he had nothing against public school educated television and film stars doing well

But McAvoy, 35, who is currently appearing to rave reviews as an aristocrat in The Ruling Class, said it was unrepresentative.

Oscar nominee Julie Walters spoke out that working class children could no longer afford drama school, and "soon the only actors are going to be privileged kids ."

This year's British contingent for the Academy Awards is dominated by Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne, from Harrow and Eton respectively.

McAvoy, who attended St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary in Jordanhill, Glasgow, said: "Whenever we talk about this we have to be very very clear. There's a lot of posh actors, that have been to boarding school and all that, who are feeling very embattled, sort of cornered.

"Nobody has got anything against an actor who is posh and is doing really well."

The actor, who is playing the fictional 14th Earl of Gurney, added: "But we are real worried about a society that doesn't give opportunities to everybody from every walk of life to be able to get into the arts, and that is happening.

"That doesn't affect us right now, but it will affect us 5 years from now, ten years from now, certainly further down the line.

"That's a frightening world to live in because as soon as you get one tiny pocket of society creating all the arts, or culture starts to become representative not of everybody, but of one tiny part, and that's not fair to begin with, but it's also damaging for society."

McAvoy, who is married to award winning actress Anne-Marie Duff, who also went to a comprehensive, lives an unshowey life off stage, living in Crouch End, North London. They have a young son Brendan.