Donna Jordan clasped her hands together the moment she heard her son's name. She'd driven him to auditions two or three times a day when he was a kid — and now he was walking to the stage at the Dolby Theatre to pick up an Oscar. Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor at the 98th Academy Awards on March 15, 2026, for playing identical twin brothers in Ryan Coogler's Sinners. He'd brought his mother as his date.
Who's Who?
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Michael B. Jordan — Brought his mom as his date to the Oscars, then thanked every Black actor who won before him. -
Ryan Coogler — Told Jordan he was a movie star in 2012. Five films later, they both have Oscars. -
Autumn Durald Arkapaw — First woman to win Best Cinematography in the award's 98-year history. -
DJDonna Jordan — Drove her son to auditions two or three times a day when he was a kid.
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Delroy Lindo — His son Damiri told him about the nomination — after a 50-year career without one. -
Wunmi Mosaku — Spent months studying hoodoo and perfecting a Louisiana Creole dialect for the role. -
Paul Thomas Anderson — Eleven nominations, zero wins — until One Battle After Another swept the night. -
Ludwig Göransson — Three Best Original Score wins by age 41 — the youngest to do it.
"God is good," Jordan said when he reached the microphone. Then he said something that mattered more: "I stand here because of the people who came before me. To be amongst those giants, amongst those greats, amongst my ancestors, amongst my guys, thank you everybody in this room and everybody at home for supporting me over my career. I feel it." The giants he meant: Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker, Will Smith. Jordan is the sixth Black man to win Best Actor in the award's history.
In Sinners, Jordan plays Elijah "Smoke" and Elias "Stack" Moore, twin brothers and WWI veterans who open a juke joint in an abandoned sawmill in 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi. What starts as a music story becomes a vampire siege. The film earned 16 nominations — the most of any film in Academy history — and won four. It grossed $370 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing original film of the 2020s and the fifth-highest-grossing horror film ever. All of that from an original story, no franchise, no sequel.
The person who wrote that story is Ryan Coogler, who also won Best Original Screenplay. He and Jordan have been making movies together since 2013, when Coogler saw something in him and said, "I think you're a movie star. Let's do this project together and show the world." That project was Fruitvale Station. Then came Creed, Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, and now Sinners — five films in thirteen years. In his speech, Coogler said he wrote the movie for his kids, "to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we're handing off to them." He's married to Zinzi Evans, and they have three children.
Behind the camera in a different way was Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who shot Sinners on IMAX 65mm and Ultra Panavision — the first female cinematographer to work with either format. When she won Best Cinematography, she became the first woman to take that award in its 98-year history. Arkapaw, who is of Filipino and African American Creole descent, asked every woman in the room to stand up. "I feel like I don't get here without you guys," she told them.
Delroy Lindo, 73, got his first Oscar nomination for playing blues musician Delta Slim — after a 50-year career. His son Damiri was the one who told him about the nomination. He lost Best Supporting Actor to Sean Penn, who won his third Oscar but wasn't there to accept it, reportedly traveling to Ukraine instead. Wunmi Mosaku, the Nigerian-British actress who played hoodoo practitioner Annie, also earned her first nomination after 20 years in the industry. She'd spent months studying hoodoo and perfecting a Louisiana Creole dialect for the role. Ludwig Göransson won his third Best Original Score — after Black Panther and Oppenheimer — making him the youngest three-time winner in the category at 41.
The night's other headline belonged to Paul Thomas Anderson, who finally won his first Oscars after 11 prior nominations without a win. His film One Battle After Another took Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, plus three more — six total. The man behind There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread, and Licorice Pizza had waited a long time.
But the image from the night that sticks is simpler than any of that. A mother in the audience, hands clasped, watching her son hold a gold statue. Donna Jordan drove him to those auditions. She was there when it paid off.