Isla Fisher on making it in Hollywood (and how being married to Sacha Baron Cohen DIDN'T help)

'Women should not have to adopt masculine traits in order to succeed,' says Australian actress

Isla Fisher says being married to Hollywood star Sacha Baron Cohen didn't help her when her stock was low in the movie industry.

“I really have had no help,” she tells Cosmopolitan. “In fact, the one time I did ask for help was after my agent in LA fired me. I was auditioning for all sorts of things but kept getting told 'no', so she just fired me! So anyway, I said to Sacha, who was my boyfriend at the time, 'Can you ask your agent if they'll represent me?' And his agent said, 'No way.' It was the only favour I'd ever asked, and I was like, 'OK… great'. But it spurred me on.”

The actress, who married Borat and Bruno star Baron Cohen in 2010, first achieved fame in Australian soap Home and Away. She has subsequently built a name as a comic actress in Hollywood, appearing in films such as Wedding Crashers and Confessions of a Shopaholic and plays Myrtle Wilson in Baz Luhrmann's recent big screen adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

She adds that despite what some people might think, fellow actresses have been very supportive of her career.

“Women should not have to adopt masculine traits in order to succeed,” she says. “You should be able to stay as a woman, and in tune with your femininity and still be equal. Women one hundred percent support each other in the movie industry. I auditioned for a movie recently and when I went in, the producer said he'd told one of its stars, Naomi Watts, that he was auditioning me and she'd said, 'She's so funny, she's a great actress - you should hire her.' What a lovely, kind and supportive thing to do for another woman.”

Fisher also has plans to come up with her own ideas behind the camera, and has found a perhaps unlikely writing partner, her mother.

“My mum and I have actually been writing a script for a thriller together,” she says. “It's really fun. She doesn't understand the rules of screenwriting, so I'm often like, 'What?! Mum, you can't kill off the protagonist on page 10!' She breaks all the rules, which makes it original at least. We've had a scream doing it.”

The full interview appears in the July issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, on sale 4 June

Click here for behind-the-scenes footage of the cover shoot