Michael B. Jordan’s Steady Climb to Sinners, an Oscar Nomination, and the Career of His Dreams |
Michael B. Jordan, now 39 years old, has been in Hollywood since his breakout role on The Wire at 15. So it’s fair to say he knows a thing or two about how the industry works. “The weirdest thing about Hollywood is that it has the ability to make everyone feel like it just happened overnight, you know?” he tells Little Gold Men. “That’s not the case at all. But there’s something about Hollywood that doesn’t glorify the hard work.”
Jordan is the antithesis of an overnight success. He’s been intentional in the way he’s cultivated and navigated his career, starting out with TV roles on The Wire, Parenthood, and Friday Night Lights. Then he teamed with director Ryan Coogler on 2013’s Fruitvale Station, which not only launched Jordan’s movie career but established one of the most exciting creative collaborations in cinema. Jordan reunited with Coogler on all of Coogler’s subsequent directorial films, culminating in 2025’s Sinners.
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In playing twins Smoke and Stack in Sinners, Jordan, now a full-fledged movie star and producer, had to be meticulous in his performance—or performances—to make it work. “I didn’t have something that I normally have as a performer, which is the ability to improv and be spontaneous,” he says. “Whatever brother goes first sets the rules and the boundaries because the second take that I do, I’m marrying to that first performance.”
Jordan earned his first Oscar nomination for that dual work (one of Sinners’ record-breaking 16 noms). It’s a major milestone for an actor who’s been climbing this mountain for more than two decades—but as a natural workaholic, Jordan isn’t only handling the awards circuit right now. He’s also in the edit room on his own directorial project, a reimagining of The Thomas Crown Affair, in which he also stars. “It’s challenging, but sometimes it’s good to be able to get out of something that you have no control over, you know?” he says. “I could go back to my edit, something that I have full control over.”
Taking a little time out of his whirlwind schedule, Jordan spoke to Little Gold Men about how his career might shift more to directing in the future, how therapy has helped him as an actor, and which of the twins took more out of him to play. |
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