Alfonso Cuarón had the audience of the Marrakech Film Festival in stitches during a wide-ranging conversation in which he revealed that he had never read a Harry Potter book before shooting “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” He also recalled turning down an offer to shoot a James Bond movie after having dinner with filmmaker Joel Coen.

Asked by Moroccan directors Alaa Eddine Aljem and Talal Selhami how he managed to put his personal stamp on the third “Harry Potter” film which, the moderators noted, is considered by many fans the best installment in the franchise, Cuarón replied that he basically had to pay the bills.

“I had written ‘Children of Men’ that nobody wanted to do. I was unemployed. I was going to have a child,” Cuarón explained. “This film was offered to me, and I didn’t want to do it because I didn’t know anything about Harry Potter.