Jordin Sparks
Jordin Sparks is an actor, born 1989.
Winning American Idol at seventeen made her the youngest champion the show had produced, and it set a bar the rest of the career has been measured against ever since. The self-titled 2007 debut album went platinum, passed two million copies worldwide and reached number ten on the Billboard 200. No Air, her duet with Chris Brown, was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals and remains one of the largest-selling songs any Idol contestant has released.
The screen work came later and has been a quieter business. Sparkle in 2012 handed her the title role, and it is still the only film here that asks her to carry one; whatever else it is, the singing sequences justify the casting completely. The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete, the following year, is the more interesting film and the smaller part, and it is the better evidence that she can act when the material demands rather than accommodates.
Since then the work has settled into two markets that reliably hire recognisable singers. There is faith-based drama, in Left Behind and God Bless the Broken Road, and family voice work, in Show Dogs, The Chosen Adventures and The Pout-Pout Fish. Add a Christmas television movie in Dear Secret Santa and guest slots on Name That Tune, I Can See Your Voice and Big Time Rush, and the picture is of a performer who has stayed employed by being good company across a lot of formats, without yet finding a screen role that uses her the way the records did.
Movies (9)
TV (9)
Music (1)
Where to start with Jordin Sparks
Everything here points back to Sparkle, the one film built around her, and the musical numbers are where the casting logic pays off. Follow it with The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, a much better film in which she has far less to do and does it well. Left Behind and God Bless the Broken Road are the faith-market titles, competently made and aimed squarely at an audience that already knows what it wants from them. Show Dogs represents the family voice work. And American Idol is where the whole thing starts, worth revisiting the 2007 season for the nerve of a teenager singing under that much pressure.