His films include Logan's Run, Les Misérables, Old Boyfriends, Raise the Titanic, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, The Yakuza, Interiors, The Bunker, Dune, The Secret of My Success, Timebomb, The Hunt for Red October, Posse and Gettysburg.

He also began working in television productions, appearing in episodes of The Defenders, Naked City, Ben Casey, Empire,[4] and The Wide Country.

[5] In 1970, Jordan made his film debut in Lawman (1971),[3] and Valdez Is Coming (1971),[4] with Burt Lancaster, and appeared opposite Robert Mitchum twice: in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973),[4] as the informant-Coyle's handler, a pragmatic U.S. Treasury agent; and in The Yakuza (1975),[4] as the bodyguard of Mitchum's friend, George Tanner.

He played a host of villains and mixed good guy-villains in films such as the western Rooster Cogburn (1975),[3] sci-fi adventure Logan's Run (1976), and the Woody Allen-directed drama Interiors (1978).

[7] In 1976, Jordan earned a Golden Globe award[1] for his role as Joseph Armagh, an Irish immigrant who fights his way to power and wealth in Captains and the Kings.

[3] In the 1980s, Jordan performed in a number of feature films, such as Raise the Titanic (1980),[3] Flash of Green (1984),[4] Dune (1984),[3] The Mean Season (1985), and The Secret of My Success (1987).

[4] He co-starred in an acclaimed television production of The Bunker (1981),[3] playing Albert Speer to Anthony Hopkins's Adolf Hitler.

[3] On stage, Jordan won an Obie award for his appearance in New York in the Czech playwright Václav Havel's A Private View (1983),[4] and an L.A.

[1][9] A memorial in Jordan's honor was held at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles on October 8, 1993, the day Gettysburg was released.