Salma Hayek felt like Antonio Banderas was a "ghost" in the studio when she was recording Puss in Boots.

The actress voices the character of Kitty Softpaws in the new animated movie, with Antonio lending his vocals to the title star. The picture is a spin-off from the Shrek franchise, which also features Puss.

The two stars have worked together on many different films, including 1995's Desperado and the 2004 release Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Although they weren't in the same studio while recording their parts for Puss in Boots, neither of them found it hard.

"After 18 years of knowing him and working together and being friends and we are together with the kids and we do movies, it was no challenge to have a relationship with Antonio [in this movie]," she told Cover Media. "As a matter of fact, his character I know so well because when you have a four-year-old you watch those films over and over and over, I felt like I had a ghost in the recording studio talking to me. I could also hear him saying the lines. So the relationship was very easy."

Antonio had a very similar experience.

He's so close to Salma he found himself imagining what she would do with the script, then making sure he reacted to her parts in a suitable way.

"We fight well on screen, we can produce a lot of comedy in soft fights and her character was actually pretty much in the rules of what we do. The rules are to make the character a little bit like the actor who is going to play them," he explained. "I know Salma, she is independent, free-spirited a fighter, sexy of course, and these number of things were there so I knew pretty much how she was going to play those lines so I just tries to bounce them back."

Puss in Boots is released in the UK on December 9.