The ‘Sinners’ star parlayed his dual roles into his first Oscar.
Jordan earned his first-ever Oscar nomination for playing twins Smoke and Stack in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which came into the night with a record 16 nominations. He recently won the prize for lead actor at the Actor Awards , which indicated his momentum in the highly contested actor race.
From the stage, Jordan called out his collaborator Ryan Coogler, his cast—including “Hailee at home”—and thanked the Black actors who preceded him by winning lead-actor awards at the Oscars, including Denzel Washington and Halle Berry. “Thank you,” he said, “keep betting on me.” Jordan and Marty Supreme’s Timothée Chalamet were considered in a close race for the best-actor race, and were both nominated alongside Ethan Hawke , Leonardo DiCaprio , and Wagner Moura . Jordan is just the sixth Black actor to win in the leading-actor category, following Sidney Poitier , Denzel Washington , Jamie Foxx , Forest Whitaker , and Will Smith . Sinners is Jordan’s fifth collaboration with Coogler. They previously worked together on Fruitvale Station , Creed , Black Panther , and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever . “It’s always been an uphill battle to prove certain things—not that we ever tried to prove anything,” Jordan told Vanity Fair for our Hollywood Issue cover in November. “We always wanted to focus on the work and let those things speak for themselves.” Sinners required meticulous and delicate work from Jordan, who had to embody two very different characters for the film. Because of the technical challenges of having to replicate his performance, he was limited in his ability to improvise, as he told Vanity Fair last month. “Whatever brother goes first sets the rules and the boundaries because the second take that I do, I’m marrying to that first performance,” he said. “So if I walked in a certain area or if I occupied a certain space on set or said something, when I become the other twin, I can’t walk in that same space at the same time. I can’t talk over him, so I have to leave these spaces.” Jordan added that these roles were the hardest of his long career, which started when he was just a child with roles in TV series like All My Children, The Wire, and Friday Night Lights. The good news for fans of this newly minted Oscar winner is that he’s already hard at work on his next film. After making his directorial debut with Creed III, Jordan helmed an upcoming remake of the Thomas Crown Affair, in which he also stars. It’s planned for release next year. Watch the Vanity Fair Oscar Party livestream—hosted by Quenlin Blackwell, Jake Shane, and Brittany Broski—directly after the Academy Awards at youtube.com/vanityfair on Sunday, March 15, 10:30 p.m. ET and 7:30 p.m. PT.
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