It is not just the Oscars that have a diversity problem. Women, minorities and the LGBT community are vastly under-represented throughout Hollywood, according to a report published ahead of the Academy Award ceremony.

The report looked at 109 films and 305 television and digital series released in 2014 and found that only 28 per cent of all speaking characters are people of colour – some nine per cent below the make-up of the US population.

“The results reveal that the prequel to #OscarsSoWhite is #HollywoodSoWhite,” said the report by the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

This is no mere diversity problem

“This is no mere diversity problem. This is an inclusion crisis,” said the report’s author, Stacy L. Smith.

The study was published days before the Oscars ceremony in Hollywood on Sunday – the movie industry’s biggest night – which has been overshadowed this year by a furore over the all-white line-up in the lead and supporting acting nominees.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Oscars, responded by announcing plans in January to double itsnumbers of women and minority members by 2020.

Of the 414 movies and TV series studied in the new report, one-third of speaking characters were female and two per cent were lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, the report found.

Behind the camera, a mere 15 per cent of all directors and 29 per cent of writers across film and television were women.

“Over half of the content we examined features no Asian or Asian-American characters, and over 20 per cent featured no African-American characters. It is clear that the ecosystem of entertainment is exclusionary,” Smith said.