Sunjata was born and grew up in Chicago, the adopted son of Bill and Catherine Condon, a police dispatcher and a civil rights worker. His adoptive parents are of Irish and Italian-German descent. He is named in honor of the African king Sundiata Keita, founder of the Mali Empire; the name means "hungry lion." He was told his biological mother was a white teenager who had run away from home and his father was black. He graduated from Mount Carmel High School in Chicago, where he played linebacker for two state championship football teams. He completed his undergraduate studies at Florida A&M University and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He received a master\'s degree in fine arts from the Graduate Acting Program at New York University\'s Tisch School of the Arts. He is of Black, German, and Irish descent.\n', '

Sunjata played the role of a sailor on shore leave on the first post-9/11 themed episode of Sex and The City. He portrayed poet Langston Hughes in the film Brother to Brother (2004) and James Holt, a fashion designer, in The Devil Wears Prada (2006).\n', '

He starred as firefighter Franco Rivera on the television program Rescue Me. During the summer of 2007, he also starred in the ESPN miniseries The Bronx is Burning as Reggie Jackson. He appeared as a Special Forces Operative in Christopher Nolan\'s The Dark Knight Rises (2012).\n', '

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