Michael B. Jordan

Michael B. Jordan is an American actor, director, and producer born on February 9, 1987, in Santa Ana, California. Raised in Newark, New Jersey, he began as a child model before moving into acting. Early television appearances included The Sopranos and Cosby, while his first substantial series role was Wallace, a teenager involved in Baltimore’s drug trade, on HBO’s The Wire in 2002. From 2003 through 2006, Jordan played Reggie Montgomery on the ABC soap opera All My Children. He later portrayed quarterback Vince Howard on NBC’s Friday Night Lights, appearing during the program’s final two seasons for a decade. Jordan’s breakthrough film performance came in Ryan Coogler’s 2013 drama Fruitvale Station. He played Oscar Grant III, the real 22-year-old Bay Area man killed by a transit police officer at Oakland’s Fruitvale station on New Year’s Day 2009. The film follows Grant during his final day and brought Jordan major critical attention. He reunited with Coogler for Creed in 2015, starring as Adonis Creed, the son of Apollo Creed, opposite Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa. Jordan returned for Creed II in 2018 and made his directorial debut with Creed III in 2023. He served as a producer on the third film, which continued Adonis’s story. In 2018, Jordan played Erik Killmonger in Marvel Studios’ Black Panther, directed by Coogler. Killmonger, born N’Jadaka, challenges his cousin T’Challa for Wakanda’s throne after growing up in Oakland. Jordan reprised the character briefly in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, released in 2022. His other film work includes Chronicle, That Awkward Moment, Fantastic Four, Just Mercy, and Without Remorse. In Just Mercy, a 2019 legal drama based on Bryan Stevenson’s memoir, he portrayed Stevenson, the lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative. In Without Remorse, released by Amazon Studios in 2021, Jordan played Navy SEAL John Kelly, a Tom Clancy character. Beyond acting, Jordan founded Outlier Society, a production company that adopted an inclusion rider in 2018, seeking broader hiring consideration on its projects. He was named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2020. In 2021, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Jordan starred as Mark Warren in the Netflix series Raising Dion and was an executive producer on the show. The series follows a widowed mother raising a son with abilities. Jordan also starred in and produced A Journal for Jordan, a 2021 drama directed by Denzel Washington based on Dana Canedy’s memoir about Charles Monroe King.