Patricia Arquette fears new depression if Donald Trump becomes US president

Patricia Arquette said she fears America could enter a new depression if Donald Trump is successful in his bid to become president.

The Oscar-winning actress said the billionaire tycoon believed US workers were paid too much when many people were "struggling to feed their kids".

Arquette, 48, used her Oscar acceptance speech to voice concerns about wage inequality for women when she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2015 for her role in Boyhood.

She said she is concerned the issue would get worse if Mr Trump became the next president.

Arquette told the Press Association: "(Trump) said American workers are already paid too much.

"There's a lot of people that are struggling to feed their kids and they don't have enough money for one little emergency, one extra bill. That would just be devastating. It would be like having the depression all over again."

Arquette's call for "wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America" during her Oscars speech prompted an outcry of support from prominent women in the audience including Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez.

Speaking at the Museum of Contemporary Art Gala in Los Angeles, Arquette said she believed her speech had "probably" affected roles she had been offered since.

"It's impacted me in a lot ways," she said.

"I'm happy about all of them. It's all good. I don't mind. I don't care."

The actress said that while California had passed "the strongest fair pay bill in the nation" following her speech, there was still a "long way to go" to achieve wage equality.

"We need a pay cheque fairness act to pass," she said.

"There's a lot of conversations about it but the truth is there's such a long way to go.

"When you look at child poverty, and one in five hungry kids in America, a lot of them have single moms. Tens of millions of them. The number one thing we could do to affect child poverty is to make sure that women - like Latinos - aren't paid 55 cents on the dollar."

Mr Trump, who is the Republican Party's presumptive nominee for the US presidential election, has previously argued that America's "taxes are too high, our wages are too high" and the US needed to "compete" with other countries.