{"id":479036,"date":"2026-03-16T18:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/479036\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T18:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:56:08","slug":"how-can-i-do-better-michael-b-jordans-oscar-win-for-sinners-is-a-deserved-reward-for-an-outstanding-actor-oscars-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/479036\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018How can I do better?\u2019: Michael B Jordan\u2019s Oscar win for Sinners is a deserved reward for an outstanding actor | Oscars 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael B Jordan\u2019s best actor Oscar places him in an exclusive club<\/a>. Only five black actors have won the award before. He now sits on a list that includes Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker, Denzel Washington and Sidney Poitier, the first black winner for Lilies of the Field in 1964.<\/p>\n

But less than a month ago, it seemed unlikely. Jordan\u2019s success at the Actors awards was the first serious hint that he could beat Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, who had won at the Golden Globes and was the frontrunner for much of the awards campaign. But Chalamet, who made a few missteps on the campaign trail<\/a>, was up against one of the most well-loved actors operating in Hollywood. Jordan is someone who at only 39 years old has managed to amass a body of work that straddles commercial and critical success.<\/p>\n

Out of his list of predecessors, Jordan most resembles Washington and Poitier \u2013 talented and driven \u2013 with a desire to ascend the heights of his industry and remain there. Jordan\u2019s acceptance speech acknowledged his cast and the five other black actors who have won the award before him, but it also alluded to Jordan\u2019s own unique position in US culture. \u201cI know you guys want me to do well,\u201d he said after thanking everyone in the room who\u2019d supported him. \u201cAnd I want to do that because you guys bet on me, so thank you for keeping betting on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wager that many have made is that Jordan is the African-American movie star of his generation: he is capable of leading the biggest franchises, of fronting Calvin Klein campaigns, of winning sexiest man alive awards and of being captivating on screen \u2013 even when playing juke-joint-owning twins in a vampire thriller<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jordan\u2019s journey began in Newark, New Jersey, where he was bullied at school because he shared a name with the greatest basketball player of all time, and because he was upfront about his aims to become an actor. His mother Donna, who was by his side at the Oscars<\/a>, was instrumental in helping him get into acting after being told when he was 11 years old that he should consider modelling.<\/p>\n

Last week his former drama teacher spoke about his early focus. \u201cOur conversations were always about how he could get better,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019d ask me, \u2018How can I do better at an audition? Do you have any audition material for me?\u2019 He was a tremendous worker \u2013 very empathetic, very compassionate and beyond his years.\u201d Other teachers have spoken about his poise and maturity, even as a young teen.<\/p>\n

Jordan was still in school when he landed the role of naive drug dealer Wallace, who becomes embroiled in the deadly world of Baltimore\u2019s gangs in David Simon\u2019s The Wire. Arguably the show\u2019s most memorable moment came when his former boss repeatedly asks the man responsible for his murder, \u201cWhere\u2019s Wallace at<\/a>?\u201d Despite not being on screen, Wallace\u2019s performance helped create a moment that spoke to the destructive callousness of the war on drugs.<\/p>\n

Michael B Jordan as Oscar Grant in the 2013 film Fruitvale Station, directed by Ryan Coogler. Photograph: Rachel Morrison\/Allstar<\/p>\n

His next big moment came with Fruitvale Station<\/a>, his first collaboration with Coogler, the real-life story of Oscar Grant, an African-American man killed by police in Oakland on New Year\u2019s Day 2009. It was shot on a tiny budget and was one of the standouts at the 2013 Sundance film festival<\/a>. With that intense and heart-wrenching performance, Jordan proved he had the ability to be the centre of a film that spoke to larger overarching themes that dominate American life.<\/p>\n

Then came an unexpected twist: a move into genre movies. Coogler was chosen as the director to resurrect the Rocky series with the Creed spin-offs<\/a>, and Jordan was cast as the son of Balboa\u2019s former rival turned mentor, Apollo Creed. Three commercially successful Creed films followed, taking more than \u00a3600m at the box office.<\/p>\n

The actor\u2019s relationship with Coogler, which now spans five films, has been likened to De Niro and Scorsese\u2019s: a tight actor\/director union that yields consistently solid results. They also deliver at the box office, with Sinners<\/a> bringing in over \u00a3300m globally, well above Oscar rival One Battle After Another.<\/p>\n

His turn as Killmonger in Black Panther (another Coogler picture) managed to trigger a culture war argument about the provenance of items held by the British Museum<\/a>. His fan adoration also played into the narrative that the character, who was pitched as the film\u2019s villain, was actually more complicated and could be seen as a Pan-African anti-colonialist hero<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some wondered in the buildup to the Oscars about whether Jordan is a \u201cstar\u201d rather than a \u201cgreat actor\u201d<\/a>. After his Oscars win, the truth appears that he is both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael B Jordan\u2019s best actor Oscar places him in an exclusive club. Only five black actors have won…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-479036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}