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Robert Rodriguez

Born 20 June 1968 in San Antonio, USA

The self-professed "rebel without a crew" shot action and horror movies on video as a child before creating a daily comic strip during his adolescence followed by a first feature in his early twenties, the notorious El Mariachi (1992), made for $7,000, much of which was raised from Rodriguez's participation in medical research studies. A rousing hit at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award and resulted in a studio distribution deal through Columbia Pictures, El Mariachi put the Austin, Texas-based one-man crew on the independent film map, where he was embraced by the same movie geek contingent that helped turned his friend and fellow B-movie obsessive, Quentin Tarantino, into a cause celebre. The two kindred spirits would go on to work together in various capacities over the years, culminating in the exploitation double-header Grindhouse (2007), to which Rodriguez contributed the zombie horror opus Planet Terror. After a string of studio projects, including the blockbuster Spy Kids trilogy (2001-2003) and two Mariachi sequels, Desperado (1995) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), Rodriguez unleashed his most impressive feat to date, an adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel Sin City (2005), featuring a rogue's gallery of villains and vixens, some of the most visceral screen violence in memory, and a digitally-enhanced veneer that gave the film a kinetic visual edge over countless comic-book competitors. A multi-hyphenate known for his "Mariachi-style" low-budget, no-nonsense, do-it-yourself method of film making, Rodriguez has worked (often all at once) as producer, director, writer, editor, camera operator, musical score composer, production designer and sound editor. His next two features are Sin City sequels.

Films -

1992 El Mariachi
1995 Desperado
1996 From Dusk Till Dawn
1998 The Faculty
2001 Spy Kids
2002 Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
2003 Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
2005 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D
2005 Sin City
2007 Grindhouse: Planet Terror
2007/08 Sin City 2


Selected Awards

1993 El Mariachi: Audience Award, Sundance Film Festival; Audience Award, Deauville Film Festival
1994 El Mariachi: Best First Feature, Independent Spirit Awards
1996 From Dusk Till Dawn; Silver Scream Award, Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival
1999 Berlinale Camera, Berlin International Film Festival
2005 Sin City; Technical Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival