Hollywood has plenty to say about Michael B. Jordan as he covers American Vogue
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Michael B. Jordan covers American Vogue, where Octavia Spencer, Ben Affleck, Tessa Thompson and Kenneth Branagh explain what makes the Oscar-winning actor one of Hollywood’s leading men.
Michael B. Jordan is getting his flowers from some pretty impressive company.
Fresh off his historic Oscar win for “Sinners,” the 39-year-old actor, director, and producer covers the October 2026 issue of American Vogue, marking the milestone with a sprawling profile tracing his journey from child actor to one of Hollywood’s most bankable leading men.
Jordan himself recognized the significance of the moment.
“A Black man on the cover of American Vogue,” he told the magazine, also noting that the shoot paired him with a Black stylist and Latino photographer.
But some of the profile’s biggest praise comes from the people who have worked alongside Jordan over the course of his career, including Octavia Spencer, Tessa Thompson, Kenneth Branagh and close friend and mentor Ben Affleck.
Perhaps no one summed up Jordan’s current place in Hollywood more succinctly than Spencer.
“He’s this generation’s Sidney Poitier,” she told Vogue. “There aren’t very many Black leading men who are bona fide box office successes.”
Spencer starred opposite Jordan in 2013’s “Fruitvale Station,” playing the mother of Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old Black man killed by a BART police officer in Oakland, California, in 2009. The film marked Jordan’s first leading role and his first collaboration with filmmaker Ryan Coogler.
Although Spencer and Jordan only spent three days together on set, Vogue reports that the two quickly developed a familial bond and remain friends more than a decade later. Spencer told the magazine she recently rewatched both “Black Panther” and “Sinners” during a flight and was struck by how completely Jordan disappeared into his characters.
Affleck offered another classic Hollywood comparison.
“He’s kind of like a Cary Grant, but more physically imposing and masculine,” Affleck told Vogue.
The Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker, whom Vogue describes as a close friend and mentor to Jordan, praised his ability to move convincingly between different kinds of characters.
Affleck said Jordan can be equally believable as a fighter, a vulnerable man or someone whose intelligence drives the character, adding that his performances frequently leave him wondering which version is closest to the real Jordan.
Kenneth Branagh, who stars alongside Jordan in the upcoming “The Thomas Crown Affair,” was similarly impressed by the actor-director.
“He seemed pretty serious about his work, but also quite twinkly,” Branagh recalled of meeting Jordan. “Mischievous, rather cheeky, rather playful.”
Jordan is directing, producing and starring in the new take on “The Thomas Crown Affair,” following Steve McQueen, who starred in the 1968 original, and Pierce Brosnan, who took on the role in the 1999 remake.
While working with Jordan on the film, Branagh was particularly struck by how much thought he puts into physical movement. He compared that quality to legendary ballet dancer and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov, with whom Branagh previously worked.
“He is someone who has a very sharp mind,” Branagh said of Jordan, “but he thinks physically.”
Tessa Thompson, Jordan’s longtime “Creed” costar, focused on something else: the purpose behind the stories Jordan chooses to tell.
“He thinks a lot about the implications of the characters he plays, and what he wants to tell folks about what’s possible—especially for Black men,” Thompson told Vogue.
She pointed to a scene in “Creed” in which Jordan’s Adonis helps her character, Bianca, with her braids as an example of his interest in showing Black life beyond the narrow roles Hollywood has historically offered Black actors.
“I think that’s something that’s really important to him: What are the things that we want to normalize, and frankly glamorize, about our everyday lives?” Thompson said.
That intention extends behind the camera. In 2018, Jordan announced that his production company, Outlier Society, would adopt inclusion riders, which call for productions to make commitments to diversity among casts and crews.
Jordan’s latest Vogue profile arrives at a defining point in his career. In March, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual performance as twins Smoke and Stack in Coogler’s “Sinners.” He is now putting the finishing touches on “The Thomas Crown Affair” while preparing for a “Miami Vice” reboot alongside Austin Butler and producing “Delphi,” a “Creed” spinoff series set inside a boxing gym.
Despite all those projects, Jordan told Vogue he still doesn’t spend much time thinking of himself as a “movie star.” He prefers “leading man.”
Still, throughout the profile, his name repeatedly lands in some rarefied company.
There is Michael Jordan, the basketball legend whose name gave the young actor an unavoidable measuring stick. Denzel Washington became a model for the kind of career and privacy Jordan hoped to maintain. For an actor who has spent more than two decades building his career, that company seems fitting with the ambition Jordan says he has always had.
“Whatever I wanted to do in life, I wanted to be competitive at,” Jordan told Vogue, “and I wanted to be mentioned amongst the greats.”