Nicholas Hoult has recalled how he was scared of being a child star.

The actor, 36, was just 12 years old when he starred in hit movie, About a Boy.

Now he's opened up about the pressures of becoming famous at a young age.

"Everyone (back) then, even as a kid, everyone talks to you about how child actors stop working, their life goes off the rails and it doesn't work out as adults," he said at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia. "You have this kind of fear of what's to come."

He added, "Even then I knew I wanted to continue (acting) but I was like, there's a good chance this doesn't work out. Luckily my parents and my family were wonderful in the sense of they sent me to a normal school and kept life around acting as regular as possible, so there was never like this pressure to succeed."

He has previously spoken about how he believes having a supportive family and friends meant that he was able to stay on the straight and narrow.

"Well, it was just having good family, and friends around you, isn't it? People that don't let you go insane. Most of the time you just have a pretty normal life, don't you? Yeah. You do... I mean, it's not like everything changes. You still just, like, go back to school. It's just the normal stuff, most of the time."

As an adult, Nicholas has starred in movies including X-Men: First Class, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and Superman. He was nominated for two Golden Globes and an Emmy award for his role in comedy-drama series The Great.