Michael B. Jordan battles his way to Oscar for 'Sinners' / Photo: © AFP
Michael B. Jordan battles his way to Oscar for 'Sinners'
Michael B. Jordan on Sunday won the best actor Oscar for playing twins confronted with pure evil in vampire race fable "Sinners" -- tortured fighters typical of the roles director Ryan Coogler has repeatedly created for him.
Jordan made good on the momentum he gained by winning the SAG Actor Award two weeks ago to bring home an Academy Award in his first try.
He bested "Marty Supreme" star Timothee 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").
At age 39, 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.
"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 organized crime in Chicago.
The brothers want to open an off-the-books juke joint, smack in the middle of the Prohibition era.
Of course, they want to make some money, but they also want to help the 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.
- 'Charisma' -
The twin roles fall right in line with other characters designed for Jordan by Coogler, who has featured the actor in all of his films -- always a complicated, imperfect man.
The pair started their collaboration with "Fruitvale Station" (2013), in which Jordan played Oscar Grant, a young Black man battling fate until he is shot dead by a police officer.
They moved on to the titular boxer in "Creed," tormented by his father's legacy, and the villainous Killmonger of "Black Panther," traumatized by being an orphan in a racist world.
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 in the same interview.
"It made me double down and fueled this fire that I had to make it a reality."
- 'Workaholic' -
Born in California on February 9, 1987 and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Jordan's teacher mom pushed him into modeling at age 11.
After a few commercials, Jordan picked up small television roles before his first real break, appearing in a season of the lauded 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, a crew of Black pilots during World War II.
"Fruitvale Station" came out the following year, and his partnership with Coogler was sealed.
In 2015, the director called him back for "Creed," a reboot of the "Rocky" franchise with Jordan playing Adonis, the son of Rocky's nemesis Apollo Creed and Sylvester Stallone sliding back into his signature role -- this time as Adonis's trainer.
His first taste of the superhero genre came in the unfancied 2015 adaptation of "Fantastic Four" as Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, but "Black Panther" and its sequel solidified his presence in the Marvel cinematic universe.
Since then, Jordan has carefully managed his image.
He has made no secret of going to therapy to shed Killmonger's demons, but has said little about his private life and described himself to GQ last year as a "workaholic" whose longest relationship lasted a year.
In recent years, he 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 role of 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.
(P.Vasilyevsky--DTZ)
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