The odds swung in favour of Michael B Jordan late in the day – but they swing decisively. On Sunday, Jordan won the Best Actor Oscar for Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, beating the awards season’s favourite Leonardo DiCaprio, nominated for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, and Timothee Chalamet for Marty Supreme

Jordan had been creeping up on the competition in recent months, with significant wins at the Actor Awards and the BAFTAs. This was Jordan’s first nomination in this category and his first win.

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Coogler’s feted period horror film stars Jordan in a double role, as the identical twins Smoke and Stack. The siblings return to their home in Mississippi to set up a juke joint. The twins, who give as good as they get, face overt racism and then a more complicated enemy in rampaging vampires.

Jordan has a commanding screen presence, skillfully differentiates between his characters, and conveys the moral complexities about justice and redemption contained in Coogler’s screenplay.

Sinners won three other awards at the ceremony, including for original screenplay.

It was Coogler’s debut feature, Fruitvale Station, in 2013, which brought Jordan to attention. Jordan had already appeared in a string of film and television roles. Fruitvale Station, about a young Black man killed by a white police officer, gave the former child model a bigger platform for his talent.

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Jordan also drew warm notices for playing the boxer Donnie in Coogler’s Creed and Black Panther.

In an interview with Variety in October, Coogler said about Jordan’s performance in Sinners: “We asked him to do this difficult thing technically, playing two different characters, but it also was a performance that we needed to have the backstory that we had before to pull this off. To see him recognized by his peers and other folks in the industry, I know that would mean a lot of him.”

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Oscars 2026: ‘One Battle After Another’ is Best Picture, Paul Thomas Anderson wins Best Director