Hope Was in the House

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He may be the villain in Black Panther, but Michael B. Jordan was certainly the hero in Santa Barbara last night.

He received multiple standing ovations and cheers throughout the night. The sold-out Arlington Theatre crowd could not have been more enthusiastic as the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) awarded the 2026 Outstanding Performer of the Year Award to Jordan, an Academy Award nominee for his challenging dual roles in Sinners as identical twin brothers, Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore. The film itself also set records, earning $368 million at the box office and 16 Oscar nominations — surpassing the previous record of 14 nominations, which was held by All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016). 

SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling was the interviewer for the night, and he took the audience through Jordan’s career journey, which began in 2002 with a pivotal role in the acclaimed TV crime drama series The Wire, then the 15-year-old starred in the soap opera All My Children for three seasons before moving to the sports drama TV series Friday Night Lights (2009–2011). 

Jordan spoke respectfully about all of his early experiences, emphasizing how much he learned from having to perform the many, many pages per day on the soap in only a single take, to working with veteran actors on The Wire.

He also spoke candidly about the challenges of show business. “The thing about acting is you become recognizable, you become famous even before you become financially stable.” He said he became more selective about roles after Red Tails, a 2012 film produced by George Lucas. “You’re defined by what you say no to,” said Jordan, who is now breathing some pretty rarefied air as one of Hollywood’s few stars with both critical acclaim and big box-office success. 

Jordan’s first starring role was in Fruitvale Station, which was also Sinners’ director Ryan Coogler’s first film. It was the start of what Durling characterized as “one of modern cinema’s most consistent and fruitful, productive partnerships.” Their other collaborations include Creed (Coogler executive produced but didn’t direct Creed II) and the two Black Panther films, as well as Sinners.

Jordan directed Creed III himself, and the influence of his love of Japanese anime was evident in the visual storytelling style of a fight sequence shared on-screen. “I always had an idea of what I wanted to do to elevate it,” said Jordan. When Durling asked if there would be a fourth edition of the Creed series (which is itself an expansion of the Sylvester Stallone Rocky series), Jordan said that “yes” there would be a fourth Creed at some point, causing a bit of stir with his management team in the audience.

Asked about that series’s portrayal of emotional complexity between two Black men in the aforementioned scene, Jordan said, “Walking around in this skin, in this body, I know it carries a weight.” That kind of sensitivity and awareness of his platform and his status as a role model peppered Jordan’s conversation throughout the night. “I like to just keep doing what I feel is right,” he said at one point.

Asked about all of the young people who look up to him — many of whom were cheering in the audience — Jordan said, “I understand the position I’m in, and I always want to be a good example.” 

He continued, “I know how important representation is.”

[Click to zoom] Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo at the SBIFF Outstanding Performer of the Year Award, Arlington Theatre, February 12, 2026 | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

Not to put any more pressure on this young man who already has so much cultural weight on his shoulders, but the grace, humble pride, love for his family, and flat-out star-quality charisma of Michael B. Jordan did remind me an awful lot of the upstart young Barack Obama candidate we saw on the lawn at Santa Barbara City College back in 2008.

As Jordan’s Sinners co-star Delroy Lindo said while presenting him with the Outstanding Performer of the Year Award, “It’s been my honor to watch the emerging of a brilliant artist who is expanding his footprint of what it means to have agency over his work, over his life, and over his impact that follows on from the head and the heart, and doing it with such humility…. It’s awe-inspiring.”