Tim Burton thinks Monica Bellucci is "special"

Confirming they are still together, Tim told The Times newspaper: "[She is] a very special person."

Meanwhile, the 'Edward Scissorhands' filmmaker admitted he "feels" for his children having grown up in the internet era because "there's something missing, there's a mystery missing".

He said: "I'm grateful in a way that I didn't grow up in the internet, because, if I think about who I was then, dealing with it [the internet], now, I ... feel like I wouldn't have survived so well."

He felt that before the development of the online world, lives and art had an "unknown, mystery quality!.

He added: "[Before a film opens now] you know everything. You know how much a movie cost. You know about the actors. You know their personal lives.

"Before, you didn't know everything about them, which made it more sort of artistic and intriguing.

"Today, everyone knows everything. It does something to a person."

Although Tim's dark characters have featured in people's nightmares, he admitted his scary nocturnal visions were of "real-life things".

He said: "Nothing scared me except real-life things like the nightmare of having to go to school or visiting my relatives or seeing my parents or whatever. I'd wake in a sweat and 'gah!' Nightmares and dreams come in different forms...

"I'll have these long dreams which I never had before, where I'll dream something horrible and then wake up and go back to sleep and dream it again."

After the third time, he will get up and have a cold shower.

It is Halloween on 31 October but the director won't be doing anything special to mark the spooky holiday.

He said: "Halloween is more for me a state of mind. I don't necessarily do anything. It's more of a private, year-round celebration."