By Kelefa Sanneh | Photography by Luis Alberto Rodriguez | Styled by Carlos Nazario

For over a decade, Michael B. Jordan has been talking about taking a break. Back in 2015, he was a young man, 28, with lots of screen credits and one main goal: make the transition from working actor to working movie star. That year, Jordan starred in a little-loved superhero movie, Fantastic Four, and then a much-loved boxing movie, Creed, a sequel to the fifth sequel of Rocky, which became a franchise in its own right thanks in large part to Jordan’s performance. He said that he wanted to ride his hot streak as long as it lasted—long enough, he hoped, to make some money to take care of his parents and his siblings. “Once they’re good I can start living a little,” he said. “My mid-30s I can live a little.” By the time he starred in Just Mercy, a 2019 legal drama based on the life of a civil rights lawyer, he was 32, with a place on Hollywood’s A-list, and he was still thinking about his next phase. He told an interviewer that he would be “in work mode” for the next few years, after which he might slow down for a while.

It has been seven years since he made that prediction, and he is busier than ever. In Hollywood, there is one credential that even movie stars covet, and Jordan received it this past March, when he was named best actor at the Academy Awards, in recognition of his dual performances as a pair of enterprising brothers in Sinners. When I caught up with him a few months later, in London, the next 12 months were already spoken for. He was scrambling to finish his new film, a reimagination of The Thomas Crown Affair, for which he is doing triple duty as actor, producer, and director. In the fall he would be shooting what could be his next lucrative franchise, a reboot of Miami Vice costarring Austin Butler, and producing Delphi, a Creed series spin-off set in a boxing gym. All spring, he’ll be promoting Thomas Crown, and after that? “I’ll probably take the rest of next year off,” he told me. “That’s probably when I’m going to do more reflecting and processing of all of this. Because honestly, it’s been—I’ve been moving.”

Michael B. Jordan was making her exit after attending the star-studded Malibu wedding of Jordyn Woods and Karl-Anthony Towns on July 15, 2026.

Michael B. Jordan unexpectedly steals the spotlight at ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ premiere

Michael B. Jordan was among the biggest surprises on the red carpet as he attended the Los Angeles premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day on Monday, July 27, joining the film’s cast and a host of Hollywood stars ahead of its theatrical release.

The actor, who is not part of the Spider-Man: Brand New Day cast, made an unexpected appearance at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, where he posed for photographers on the red carpet. His attendance quickly became one of the night’s most talked-about moments, with fans delighted to see the Creed and Black Panther star at Marvel’s latest premiere.

They also spoke to him about the upcoming selection for Black Panther.

At Comic-Con 2026 over the weekend, Marvel revealed that Jonsson will star as an adult version of the son of T’Challa, portrayed by the late Chadwick Boseman in the 2018 original. Black Panther 3 will also film on 70mm and hit theaters Dec. 15, 2028.

A few days after the announcement, Entertainment Tonight caught Jordan at the Spider-Man: Brand New Day premiere in Los Angeles Monday night to ask him about his thoughts on the casting.

Michael B Jordan attended this years ceremony for the Critics Choice Awards. He was nominated for lead actor for his role in Sinners.

Michael B Jordan attended the Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards where he was honored by Coleman Domingo with the Icon Award.

Johnson, Elordi, Michael B. Jordan, Adam Sandler, Jeremy Allen White, Wagner Moura and Mark Hamill, all in the hunt for their first Oscar nomination, bond over what it took to make it in this crazy industry.

The seven men who gathered for THR‘s Oscar season Actors Roundtable — Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi, The Life of Chuck’s Mark Hamill, The Smashing Machine’s Dwayne Johnson, Sinners’ Michael B. Jordan, The Secret Agent’s Wagner Moura, Jay Kelly’s Adam Sandler and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’s Jeremy Allen White — don’t share very much in common.

Five are American (Hamill, Johnson, Jordan, Sandler and White), one is Australian (Elordi) and one is Brazilian (Moura). Their ages span from 20s (Elordi, 28) to 70s (Hamill, 74). Some shot to fame on TV (Elordi on Euphoria, Jordan on The Wire, Moura on Narcos, Sandler on Saturday Night Live and White on Shameless), another in movies (Hamill via a little film called Star Wars) and still another in, of all things, wrestling (Johnson).

But as they sat down together at The Sun Rose West Hollywood in mid-November amid a wave of mutual admiration — “I’ve always wanted to meet you,” gushed Johnson, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, to Hamill, whom he first “encountered” decades ago as Luke Skywalker — they all shared two things: (1) Each gave a career-best performance in a 2025 film, and (2) None has ever received so much as an Oscar nomination. For at least some of them, the latter will soon change.

Michael, when you were 19 years old, you came out to L.A. to try to break into movies, but there wasn’t any interest from the agencies. How did you get past that?

TheWrap magazine: The two creative forces explain how their 13-year partnership yielded the critical and box office smash about the blues, the Jim Crow South and vampires

Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan remember their first meeting vividly. Coogler was 27, a recent USC graduate looking to cast his first feature film; Jordan was a year younger, an actor best known for roles in the TV series “The Wire,” “Friday Night Lights” and “Parenthood.” The two met in Forest Whitaker’s production office near Hollywood in 2012, and Jordan suggested they go across the street to a Starbucks to continue the conversation. Jordan, born in Southern California but raised in New Jersey, walked out of the office and straight into Cahuenga Boulevard traffic, shocking the Oakland-born-and-bred Coogler.

“I looked at him and said, Come on, they’re gonna stop!” Jordan said, laughing. “And then, man, we just hit it off.”

Coogler was seeking the lead in his movie “Fruitvale Station,” about a 22-year-old Oakland man who was shot and killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer in 2009. He wasn’t thrilled at the idea of charging across Cahuenga — “maybe they stop for you in Newark, but in California you’re putting your life in danger” — but at some point in that Starbucks, he decided to bet on this guy. “I said, ‘Hey, man, I think you’re a movie star. Let’s do this project together and show the world.’”

“It was the first time anybody told me that, without a doubt,” Jordan said. “At that point I was going around town and introducing myself and trying to get on people’s minds, but there was never somebody saying, ‘This is what I think you can do.’ I would look at myself in the bathroom mirror and try to build up the belief that I was gonna be successful, but I never knew how directors or writers or filmmakers thought about me. But when Ryan said it in that Starbucks, that was the first.”

It wasn’t the last. “Fruitvale Station” was a remarkably powerful debut, making Jordan every inch a leading man and Coogler a director to watch. Their next collaboration, the Rocky spinoff “Creed” was a critical and commercial hit. Marvel came calling and handed Coogler the reins to “Black Panther.” In return, they got themselves a $1.35 billion smash, with Chadwick Boseman as the title character and Jordan as the relentless antagonist Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, who dies in the first film but returns in spirit form in the sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”