Michael B. Jordan just won his first Oscar for best actor and thanked the Warner Brothers studio for honoring “original ideas” in Hollywood.
Jordan should perhaps receive two statuettes for his dual role as Smoke and Stack in this year’s “Sinners,” a box office and Academy favorite.
The movie already won four awards tonight and was a favorite for best picture. He ended up losing to “One Battle After Another.”
Jordan received a standing ovation when he took the stage and began his speech by shouting out his mom and dad, who he said flew from Ghana to see him win an Academy Award.
He thanked the Warner Brothers studio and co-CEOs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy “for believing in this, this dream, this vision of Ryan Coogler and betting on culture and betting on original ideas and art.”
“I am very honored to call him a collaborator and a friend,” Jordan said of Coogler, a frequent collaborator. He also thanked Coogler for giving me “the opportunity and the space to be seen. I love you too, brother.”
Jordan beat out Timothée Chalamet for “Marty Supreme,” Leonardo DiCaprio for “One Battle After Another,” Ethan Hawke for “Blue Moon” and Wagner Moura for “The Secret Agent.”
The competition was head to head. Jordan, Chalamet, Hawke and Moura would have won for the first time in the category.
Online prediction market Kalshi had Jordan in a strong lead Sunday before the show, after Chalamet’s gaffe over preferred art forms sank his chances in the weeks leading up to the event.
“Sinners,” an action thriller, places Jordan’s characters on two sides of a vampire apocalypse, set in Mississippi during the 1930s in the Jim Crow era. One must fight monsters while the other has been turned.
Jordan, in his speech, thanked the cast of “Sinners,” specifically mentioning Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo, Jayme Lawson and Omar Benson Miller, among others.
One of Jordan’s first notable roles was as a teenager on the HBO series, “The Wire,” and later, “Friday Night Lights” for two seasons. He rose to international fame with 2018’s “Black Panther” and established himself as a Hollywood mainstay with the film’s sequel, “Wakanda Forever.” He also stars in the “Creed” movies.
“I’m here because of the people who came before me,” Jordan continued, highlighting Black actors like Jamie Foxx, Will Smith, Sydney Portier and Halle Berry.
“To be among those giants, among those great ones, among my ancestors, among my guides,” he said. “Thank you Everyone in this room and everyone at home for supporting me throughout my career, I’m sorry. I know that you want me to do well and I want to do it because you bet on me. So thank you for continuing to bet on me..”
