Julia Roberts has described Hollywood's obsession with celebrity as "grotesque".

The actress said she would have steered clear of the entertainment industry if it had been as ruthless when she started her career in the late 1980s.

She said: "I think it's just grotesque. It's like a circus sideshow. I don't know why anybody would even want to go into show business these days, with all the different magazines and shows. It just wouldn't be worth it."

She claimed that today's teenage celebrities struggle to cope with the glare of publicity, saying: "It's too fast. Before, you could build a career over years and many movies. Now it's like you do one good movie and they throw a ton of money at you and a ton of attention at you."

The 40-year-old added: "You're being constructed outside of yourself before you even know who you are, and what you are, and how you want to do it, and why you want to do it."