Helena Bonham Carter’s prosthetic makeup for The Witch took five hours to apply. “I was pregnant throughout filming, so it was weird being a pregnant witch,” the actress reflected. “I had morning sickness, so all those fumes and the make-up and the rubber…it was hideous.”

Tim Burton focused on the story and limited the use of digital effects. Costume designer Colleen Atwood created special dresses for identical twins Ada Tai and Arlene Tai, who played the role of Ping and Jing. One set of dresses created the effect of fused twins on camera, while another set enhanced the added CGI of conjoined twins.

Young Edward becomes a traveling salesman for a company that sells hands with metal tools as fingers, all held together by a plastic base. The crew were aware that people would draw connections between it and Edward Scissorhands, and therefore purposely did not include scissors in the design.

Tim Burton later compared Ewan McGregor’s acting style to regular colleague Johnny Depp.

French actress Marion Cotillard’s first American feature film.

Ewan McGregor was cast as Young Ed Bloom when producers noticed the striking similarity between him and pictures of a young Albert Finney, who plays Senior Ed Bloom.

Tim Burton had never been particularly close to his parents, but his father’s death in October 2000 and his mother’s in March 2002 affected him deeply. Following the production of Planet of the Apes, the director wanted to get back to making a smaller film. Burton enjoyed the script, feeling that it was the first unique story he was offered since Beetlejuice. Burton also found appeal in the story’s combination of an emotional drama with exaggerated tall tales, which allowed him to tell various stories of different genres

Steven Spielberg was attached to this project and wanted Jack Nicholson to star, but dropped out due to his full schedule, soon after which Tim Burton signed on.