HBO(NEW YORK) — Michael B. Jordan’s now a household name thanks to his acting career, but the Black Panther star admits he’s had an inferiority complex since he was young because he shares his name with a sports legend.
The actor told Good Morning America that sharing a name with one of NBA’s greatest players of all time was difficult as a young boy.
“We had the same name and I always got teased about not being the ‘real’ Michael Jordan,” he said of the six-time NBA champ. “Honestly [it] gave me a competitive chip on my shoulder and made me wanted to compete at anything I did and create my own lane and have my own legacy.”
Jordan has lived up to his early ambitions, and can now be seen in the upcoming HBO film Farenheit 451.
“[The movie] is about a futuristic society where the firefighters are put in place as the authoritative figures where they control free thought and media control,” Jordan explained of the movie based on the popular book.
“Whether it’s books, art, music — that’s all considered contraband and I play one of the firefighters, who starts to think and question kind of like what’s going on,” he said.
Farenheit 451, the dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury, was originally published in 1953, but Jordan said it’s extremely timely for our society now.
“It stood the test of time. Even today we’re dealing with media control and anti-intellectualism and questioning. We’re giving up our free thought and our freedom of choice and it’s really important today and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to get involved,” he said.
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