We read about secret lives that people have on the Internet, or alternate lives of a serial killer where the whole family didn't know that their dad or their brother or their child was that. There are all the things in our heart that no one really knows, and I thought that that was interesting territory to explore.

As a director, you try to do things that are going to touch the human experience somehow, and emotions that mean something to people. You search for those projects and you hope to realize the potential in a project.

You actually do confront your dark side, your impulses, or your feelings of sibling rivalry in Cinderella or whatever. You admit that they exist and then you work through them and conquer them and come out living happily ever after having learned something. That's one reason why the fairy tales keep having traction and meaning.

Even after I had just done Twilight, which made $400 million at the worldwide box office, I could not get financing for three or four projects that I really loved and I thought people would love because they didn't fit some studio or investor's model of thinking, "This will definitely make money." It's a business and a film does potentially cost millions of dollars, and they have to think that they're going to get their money back somehow.

I was told 50 percent of the population gets cancer. Everybody is going to be affected.

We love those beautiful, Latin American stories where there is an element that's more mysterious and wonderful. I think as a child a lot of us love the idea of the star and more of the supernatural elements.

When I was just five years old, I loved the scary layer and the symbolical power of the red cloak. I made my mom make me that red cloak, and I had to wear it on Halloween, two years in a row.