The creative world of Robert Rodriguez - in pictures

These days, Robert Rodriguez is one of Hollywood's best-known film-makers: a director operating in the genre world who nevertheless maintains a distinctly auteurish approach to his art. And he did it the old-school way – by directing his very first movie, El Mariachi, at the age of 23 with no studio help and a budget of just £7,000. Photograph: c.Weinstein/Everett/Rex Featur

El Mariachi, the first in what eventually became known as Rodriguez's Mexico trilogy, arrived in 1992 to shake up the independent film-making world, proving that a microbudget Spanish-language movie with an untried cast could pick up a US distribution deal and launch the career of its director. The film cost so little to make that the studio, Columbia, spent more on post-production film-stock transfers, promotion and marketing than Rodriguez did while making it. Photograph: Kobal

Follow-up Desperado – the second movie in the Mexico trilogy – arrived in 1995 with a budget 1,000 times bigger than its predecessor's, but at $7m still cheap for a Hollywood action film. And the final movie of the trilogy, 2003's Once Upon a Time in Mexico, still cost just $29m despite the presence of Johnny Depp alongside the returning Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek. "Even though I can make my own budgets, I always ask for less money than we need so that you have to be more creative, you have to strip it down,” Rodriguez told IGN in 2003.  Photograph: Mrimax/Colombia/Rico J Torres/Kobal

Rodriguez also turned his hand to preteen-oriented movies such as The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D (above), and the popular Spy Kids, about a pair of troubled siblings who gain new self-esteem when they discover their parents are secret agents. This was an entirely different style of film-making, yet still one reflecting the fondness for genre tropes that has always cut through the director's best work. Photograph: Kobal

A bona fide box-office hit, Spy Kids also helped prove that Latin actors needn't be pigeonholed into genre roles and spawned three sequels between 2002 and 2011.  Photograph: Dimension/Miramax/Kobal

If Desperado introduced US audiences to Spanish heart-throb Antonio Banderas, the Spy Kids series helped proved that, thanks to Rodriguez, he had effectively become Hollywood royalty. These were children's movies, yet produced with the same vim, verve and eye for detail as the film-maker's adult work.  Photograph: Columbia Pictures/Sony/Kobal

Rodriguez continued to show an ability to connect with younger audiences with 2009's Shorts, in which a bullied boy discovers a colourful, wish-granting rock that causes chaos in the suburban town of Black Falls. Made for just $20m, it was a financial success for studio Warner Bros. "It's fun to work with kids," Rodriguez told culture.com at the time. "I grew up in a family of 10 kids. There were always people around and you miss the creative energy and enthusiasm that they have. You can't replace the energy a kid has coming in bright and shiny to do a scene. You've got to step up to that." Photograph: Kobal

Not that Rodriguez was entirely giving up his love of Mexploitation. Danny Trejo had always been the Latin guy with the incredible face whose name few people knew before the film-maker cast him in the lead as a former Mexican federale – and unstoppable badass – in 2010's Machete. Made for just $10.5m, the film was a box-office hit and a sizeable critical smash. Its upcoming sequel Machete Kills is due in September this year.  Photograph: Dimension Films

Rodriguez has also turned his hand to the emerging trend for comic-book movies, but with a typically offbeat slant that owes more to 1940s noir than spandex-suited superheroes. Co-directed with the comic's creator, Frank Miller, 2005's Sin City utilised extensive green-screen technology yet managed to draw critically acclaimed performances from its cast, unlike many other similarly conceived movies of the time. Rodriguez made extensive use of innovative post-production techniques ... Photograph: Miramax Films

... to produce a slickly vivid depiction of Miller's dark and dangerous underworld, a place populated by whores with hearts of gold, murderous impish maniacs and more than a few hard-boiled types with a weakness for beautiful dames. The highly anticipated sequel is due in October. Photograph: Miramax Films