There can’t be many women who’d turn down the chance to kiss Johnny Depp. But Isla Fisher, who plays his love interest in the new animated film Rango, happily admits she surrendered the opportunity.

“Yeah, I was supposed to kiss him, but on the day I had a little cold and I didn’t want to do that to him,” says the diminutive, flame-haired Fisher with a throaty laugh, adding: “He’s the second sexiest man in the world after my husband.”

Her spouse is home-grown talent Sacha Baron Cohen of Borat and Ali G fame. They apparently met at a party in Sydney nine years ago, married in secret in 2010 and have two girls, Olive, three, and a five-month-old daughter (the intensely private pair have not yet revealed her name).

But far from acting the green-eyed monster, she adds that Baron Cohen was fine about her flirting with one of the world’s most desirable men.

“They’re friends so it was OK,” says the 35-year-old actress, smiling.

Directed by Gore Verbinski, the man behind the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, Rango is an animation unlike any other, blending off-beat humour and bleak themes in a visually intoxicating style.

At the story’s centre is Rango (Depp), a lonely chameleon with an identity crisis and a penchant for acting, who finds himself catapulted, literally, from the safety of his terrarium into the desert town of Dirt.

Here he assumes the role of the archetypal Western hero and encounters all sorts of eccentric-looking characters, including a lizard called Beans (Fisher).

“She’s definitely a character who has a strong sense of her own identity,” says Fisher of her reptilian alter ego.

“I think that’s why Rango is attracted to her. She’s a tough-talking, feisty, smart lizard who doesn’t need to be rescued in the movie, which is what I like.”

She says she didn’t actually read the script before signing up to the project but met Verbinski at his office, where he showed her images from the film.

“It’s so different from a traditional animated movie. I knew straight away I was desperate to do it.”