Michael Jordan as twin brothers in Ryan Coogler's "Sinners." Warner Bros.

It's not much of a stretch to say that Michael B. Jordan has fought his way to the top. His performances are often game-changing – as a boxing champ (in "Creed"), a Marvel superhero (in "Fantastic Four"), or a Marvel villain (in "Black Panther").

But his latest film required a different kind of superpower: In Ryan Coogler's "Sinners," Jordan plays twin brothers, Stack and Smoke, who open a backwoods honkytonk in the segregated South.

When Coogler shared the idea of him playing two different characters, Jordan says his reaction was, "'I'm a do what?' I think it was a little bit of anxiety, I think. A little bit nerves. But then, equal amount of excitement."

And it gets really exciting when vampires show up. "Sinners" is a horror film, but it's also about history, and the power of family ties.

To play characters from the Jim Crow South, Jordan drew a bit from his own family history. Relatives on his mother's side hail from Hope, Arkansas, but years ago moved to a segregated Black neighborhood in Los Angeles called Oakwood (a place that is now Venice Beach).

We visited the First Baptist Church of Venice, which was the center of their community, and one of the only remnants still standing. Jordan, who moved to New Jersey as a toddler, never went to this place of worship, but he says he can still feel the connection to his family's past. "I grew up in church, you know, very spiritual family," he said. "Churches were, like, safe havens – places of prayer and refuge … The history, I mean, you can feel the weight when you walk into a place like this."

I asked, "Did shooting 'Sinners' make you think about your own family history more?"

"Big time," he replied. "It definitely connected me back to my family's history that I've always had a strong connection with, but it just kind of reframed it a bit."

His own history is remarkable as well: Dad is a U.S. Marine veteran; mom is a former high school counselor; and Michael Bakari Jordan was a child model, then a child star. He was still in high school when he was cast in the landmark series "The Wire," and a few years later in another landmark show, "Friday Night Lights."

He said, "There's nobody in my family that came from this, I guess, that looked at it as a potential career, you know? I think once I didn't go to college and I decided to move to California and pursue acting full-time, there was, like, there was no turning back after that one."

His film breakout came in 2013 in director Ryan Coogler's drama "Fruitvale Station."

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