US actress Meghan Markle has said casting agents have been confused by her bi-racial heritage and claims having her skintone airbrushed is her “pet peeve”.

The star, who is dating Prince Harry, told Allure magazine her appearance had caused “quite the conundrum” during her career.

Markle, 35, whose mother is African-American and father is Caucasian, said she hates seeing her freckled skin altered in photoshoots.

 Meghan Markle (Matt Crossick/PA)

Meghan Markle (Matt Crossick/PA)

The actress, best known for her role in US TV legal drama Suits, told the April issue of the magazine that she had felt “too light in the black community, too mixed in the white community”.

She added: “For castings, I was labelled ‘ethnically ambiguous’. Was I Latina? Sephardic? Exotic Caucasian?

“Add the freckles to the mix and it created quite the conundrum.

Prince Harry
Prince Harry (Chris Jackson/PA)

“To this day, my pet peeve is when my skin tone is changed and my freckles are airbrushed out of a photoshoot.”

Last year, Kensington Palace criticised the “the racial undertones of comment pieces” about the star “and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments.”