Los Angeles (Mar 11): Actress Katie Leung was "racially bullied" after being cast as Cho Chang in the Harry Potter film franchise.

Leung, now 33, recalled how it all began when photos of her shooting at the sets of the fourth film in the franchise ("Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire") had leaked in the papers.

"It had got to the papers and then someone secretly took a photo of me," she remembered. "I just broke down. I just started crying. I was like, googling myself at one point and I was on this website, which was kind of dedicated to the Harry Potter fandom, and I remember reading all the comments. It was a lot of racist s**t," she said on the "Chinese Chippy Girl" podcast, reports People magazine.

"And then somebody had actually created a website, a hate site — it was like, if you disagree with this casting, then click on this button and then it would just be like a count of how many people disagreed with the casting and you would just see a number. I know, it's awful. It's so awful," she added.

Leung also revealed reaching out to a publicist to talk about it, but she was told to keep it away from the press.