LOS ANGELES • The sexual predators are running scared, but will they become "extinct"?

That is the worry for actress Diane Kruger, who noted that while the #metoo movement had signalled to powerful men that the tide had turned, she was afraid that the momentum may be short-lived.

The German-born star, who won Best Actress in May at the Cannes film festival for In The Fade - which is hotly tipped for a Best Foreign Movie Oscar nomination - also told French television that she had never been paid as much as her male co-stars.

She insisted that lasting change was possible only with men's help.

Kruger, 41, said the progress made on harassment since the scandal involving disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein shook Hollywood might be illusory if the culture did not change with it.

"For now, it is changing because men are scared," said the actress, who made her name internationally with Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds in 2009.

"Every day, there is someone new who is denounced (as an abuser)," she told BFMTV. "However, I am afraid that in six months, or a year, or even 10 years, we will still be hearing the same thing.

"We have got to be really vigilant and women have to stick together for this cause. Above all, we also need men at our sides who fight for us and defend our interests."

Kruger plays an avenging widow in Fatih Akin's thriller, In The Fade, which last week won Best Foreign Film at the Critics' Choice Awards, which tends to be the most accurate predictor of Oscar nominations.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE