Michael B. Jordan on Sunday won the Best Actor Oscar for playing twins confronted with pure evil in the vampire race fable Sinners — tortured fighters typical of the roles director Ryan Coogler has repeatedly created for him.
Jordan built on the momentum he gained by winning the Screen Actors Guild Award two weeks earlier to claim an Academy Award on his first nomination.
He beat Marty Supreme star Timothée Chalamet, who had been the frontrunner for most of Hollywood’s awards season, as well as Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another), Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent), and Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon).
At age 39, Jordan joins a small circle of Black actors who have won the prestigious Best Actor Oscar, including 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.
Sinners, a supernatural tale set against racial segregation in 1930s Mississippi, was a box-office success largely 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 hope to open an off-the-books juke joint in the middle of the Prohibition in the United States era.
While they aim to make money, they also want to help locals drown their sorrows in alcohol and the blues.
Things quickly turn dark when white vampires arrive, seeking to quench their thirst for both blood and music.
The twin roles fit a pattern of complex characters crafted for Jordan by Coogler, who has featured the actor in all of his films — often portraying complicated and imperfect men.
The pair began their collaboration with Fruitvale Station (2013), in which Jordan portrayed Oscar Grant, a young Black man whose life ends tragically after being shot by a police officer.
They later worked together on Creed, where Jordan played boxer Adonis Creed, and Black Panther, where he portrayed the villain Killmonger, a character shaped by trauma and abandonment.
Coogler has said Jordan’s success in emotionally demanding 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.
Over the past decade, the filmmaker has helped turn Jordan into a major star, even during periods when the actor doubted he could overcome the barriers faced by Black performers in Hollywood.
Coogler, Jordan said in the same interview, “gave me the reassurance and the confidence that I needed.”
“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 was encouraged by his teacher mother to begin modelling at age 11.
After appearing in commercials, he landed small television roles before his first major break in the acclaimed HBO crime drama The Wire at age 15.
He later appeared in the soap opera All My Children and the NBC sports drama Friday Night Lights before transitioning to film with a role in Red Tails (2012), about the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Black pilots who served during World War II.
His collaboration with Coogler was cemented with Fruitvale Station in 2013.
In 2015, Coogler reunited with Jordan for Creed, a revival of the Rocky franchise, where Jordan starred as Adonis, the son of Apollo Creed, with Sylvester Stallone reprising his role as Rocky Balboa — this time serving as Adonis’s trainer.
Jordan first entered the superhero genre in the 2015 adaptation of Fantastic Four, playing Johnny Storm (Human Torch). However, Black Panther and its sequel solidified his place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Since then, Jordan has carefully managed his public image. He has openly discussed attending therapy to deal with the emotional weight of playing Killmonger but has remained largely private about his personal life.
He described himself to GQ last year as a “workaholic,” noting that his longest relationship lasted a year.
In recent years, he has expanded into producing, working on projects such as Just Mercy and Without Remorse. He also directed the third instalment of the Creed series.
Jordan is set to direct and star in a new adaptation of The Thomas Crown Affair, expected in theatres in 2027, portraying the sophisticated thief previously played by Steve McQueen and Pierce Brosnan.
But Jordan says he has another ambition.
“I’m looking forward to directing something that I’m not in at all,” he told Vanity Fair earlier this year.
