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Childhood-1958-1970 

Tim Burton was born on 25th of august 1958 in Burbank, California to Bill and Jean Burton. He lived, though very emotionally distanced, with his parents until the age of 12 when he moved into his grandmother’s house. Burton describes Burbank as an anywhere USA town; he found it hard to be an individual because “from day one you’re categorized”. Burton said even once said “... I felt like a foreigner in my own neighborhood and in my own country”.



Burton said that as a child he withdrew within himself to compensate for the boring reality in lived in, hence his large imagination. His grandmother use to tell him he use to leave the house even before he could walk. He was, even at such a young age and unconsciously, trying to get out of this world he lived in. He loved the horror movies of the time and even made movies of his own. In 1984, he made ‘Vincent’, a stop motion animation about a boy very similar to himself. In the short film, Vincent was seen as a normal boy but on the inside he loved gothic, horror and monsters, the same as Burton. Also Vincent is told to stop imagining such horrid things and that they are all “games that [he] plays in [his] head”. In making this short film Burton has used no dialogue just a voice over by Vincent Price. When Burton was young he didn’t speck a lot but he drew to express his thoughts and feelings. Some of these drawings later on became inspiration for some of the characters in his films such as Edward Scissorhands.  ‘Vincent’ being an undialogued film puts this more into perspective about Burton’s early life. “In animation you could communicate through drawings and I was perfectly happy to communicate that way and not in any other.”