I really wanted our male characters to be a lot stronger. We gave them careers, lives.

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.

You can't really just think, "Oh, I want to make something that is going to appeal to every single person in the world." You have to just try to make a movie that comes from your heart.

For Twilight, I wasn't thinking it was going to be a crazy success, or anything. It had been rejected by all the major studios. Nobody wanted to make it and they didn't think it would make any money, but I read the book and I thought, "Wow, I want to capture that feeling of just being crazy in love. I wonder if I can do that in a film." That was my challenge.

As a director, when you cut scenes from a movie, you do it with the idea that it is making the story move forward and progress. Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

I thought, "If I can make you feel what it's like for that first super-passionate love, other people might like that too," and, of course, they did.

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.