Tim Burton Says Going on the Internet ‘Scared Me’ and ‘I Got Quite Depressed’: ‘I Try to Avoid It’ and Look at Clouds to Feel Better

Tim Burton is chronically not online. Speaking to the BBC ahead of the The World of Tim Burton exhibit opening at the Design Museum in London, the “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” filmmaker admitted that he gets depressed when he going on the internet and would rather spend his time looking at clouds instead.

“Anybody who knows me knows I’m a bit of a technophobe,” Burton said. “If I look at the internet, I found that I got quite depressed. It scared me because I started to go down a dark hole. So I try to avoid it, because it doesn’t make me feel good.”

“I get depressed very quickly, maybe more quickly than other people. But it doesn’t take me much to start to click and start to short circuit,” he added of the perils of the internet.

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Per the BBC: “The filmmaker said keeping busy and doing simple things such as looking at clouds helps him feel better. As does his collection of ten giant dinosaur models that he keeps in his backyard including a 20-foot T-Rex.”

Burton is coming off one of his biggest box office hits with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the long-awaited sequel to his 1988 classic. The follow-up opened in theaters in September after a splashy Venice Film Festival world premiere and has grossed $434 million and counting at the worldwide box office. Between the sequel and his wildly popular Netflix show “Wednesday” (which is likely to return for Season 2 in 2025), Burton has been experiencing some career highs as of late.

“The Hollywood journey is an Alice in Wonderland kind of journey,” Burton told BBC. “You go up, you go down, you go sideways. That’s the way it is. What I realize now, maybe because I’m older as well, is, ‘Okay, I’m just gonna do what I want.’ And if you want to do it, fine. If not, then you don’t have to go on this journey with me.”