Michael B Jordan won the best actor Oscar on Sunday for his dual performance as twins confronting pure evil in the vampire race fable “Sinners,” making good on the momentum from his SAG Actor Award two weeks ago to bring home an Academy Award in his first nomination.
The 39-year-old actor bested “Marty Supreme” star Timothée Chalamet, who had been the frontrunner for most of Hollywood’s awards season, along with Leonardo DiCaprio of “One Battle After Another,” Wagner Moura (“The Secret Agent”) and Ethan Hawke (“Blue Moon”).
With this win, Jordan joins a small circle of Black actors who have won the prestigious Best Actor Oscar, after Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker and Will Smith.
“I stand here because of the people who came before me,” an emotional Jordan told the audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
“Sinners,” a supernatural tale of racial segregation in 1930s Mississippi, was a box office success in large part due to Jordan’s compelling performances as Smoke and Stack, World War I veterans who return home after working in organised crime in Chicago.
The brothers want to open an off-the-books juke joint during the Prohibition era, aiming to make money while helping locals drown their sorrows in alcohol and the blues. Things quickly go sour when white vampires come calling, looking to quench their thirst for blood and music.
The twin roles fall right in line with other characters designed for Jordan by director Ryan Coogler, who has featured the actor in all of his films—always a complicated, imperfect man.
Coogler says Jordan’s success in tough roles is a “testament to his charisma.” “As soon as you put the camera on him, you just naturally care about the guy,” he told The New York Times in April last year when “Sinners” debuted.
The filmmaker has turned Jordan into a star over the last decade, even when the actor doubted he could overcome the perennial obstacles for Black performers in Hollywood. Coogler “gave me the reassurance and the confidence that I needed,” Jordan told the Times. “It made me double down and fueled this fire that I had to make it a reality.”
Born in California on February 9, 1987, and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Jordan’s teacher mother pushed him into modelling at age 11. After a few commercials, he picked up small television roles before his first real break, appearing in a season of the HBO crime drama “The Wire” at age 15.
He then did stints on soap opera “All My Children” and the NBC football drama “Friday Night Lights” before moving on to the big screen with a role in 2012’s “Red Tails” about the Tuskegee Airmen.
“Fruitvale Station” came out the following year, beginning his partnership with Coogler. In 2015, the director called him back for “Creed,” a reboot of the “Rocky” franchise. His first taste of the superhero genre came in the 2015 adaptation of “Fantastic Four,” but “Black Panther” and its sequel solidified his presence in the Marvel cinematic universe.
Since then, Jordan has moved into co-producing some of the films in which he has appeared, including “Just Mercy” and “Without Remorse.” He even directed the third installment of the “Creed” series himself.
He is directing and starring in an upcoming adaptation of “The Thomas Crown Affair,” expected in theaters in 2027, in which he will play the gentleman thief previously taken on by Steve McQueen and Pierce Brosnan. But Jordan has a new dream: “I’m looking forward to directing something that I’m not in at all,” he told Vanity Fair earlier this year.
