A British woman of Pakistani origin was reportedly turned away from auditions for Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit in New Zealand on the basis that she was not white enough.

Naz Humphreys, who is 5ft tall, had travelled to Hamilton from Auckland last Tuesday in the hope of securing an extra role on Peter Jackson's forthcoming two-part adaptation of JRR Tolkien's classic fantasy tale. However, according to the Waikato Times, she was told after a three-hour wait that her skin tone made it unlikely she would be cast.

"It's 2010 and I still can't believe I'm being discriminated against because I have brown skin," Ms Humphreys told the Waikato Times. "The casting manager basically said they weren't having anybody who wasn't pale-skinned."

According to the newspaper, a video shows a film company representative telling the crowd: "We are looking for light-skinned people. I'm not trying to be – whatever. It's just the brief. You've got to look like a hobbit."

Ms Humphreys, a social policy researcher, had travelled to New Zealand on a working holiday along with her husband, both of them being keen Lord of the Rings fans. She has now set up a Facebook page entitled "Hire Hobbits of all colours! Say No to Hobbit racism!"

"I would love to be an extra," said Ms Humphreys. "But it just seemed like a shame because obviously hobbits are not brown or black or any other colour. They all look kind of homogenised beige and all derived from the Caucasian gene pool.

"In 2010, a movie company should be representing all its viewers. It's not just going to be white people seeing The Hobbit, but people from all over the world."

Jackson's spokesman said: "It is not something the producers or the director of The Hobbit were aware of; they would never issue instructions of this kind to the casting crew. All people meeting the age and height requirements are welcome to audition for The Hobbit."

A spokesman for the film-maker's company, Wingnut Films, said the offending crew member, an independent contractor, had been sacked. "It's something we take very seriously," he told AFP.

The member of staff had placed an advertisement in a local newspaper specifying female hobbit extras "with light skin tones" and had also been responsible for informing Ms Humphreys that she did not fit the bill.

"No such instructions were given, the crew member in question took it upon themselves to do that and it's not something we instructed or condoned," the spokesman said.

Tolkien's guidance on the subject of hobbit skin tone is unclear, though according to The Complete Guide to Middle-earth he did specify that Harfoots, the most common type of hobbit, were "browner" than other groups. The Fallohides who settled the Shire and Hobbiton, had "fairer skin". At 5ft, however, Ms Humphreys would have been a giant of a female hobbit, as Tolkien wrote that they were between 2ft and 4ft tall, with the average height being 3ft 6in.