Sanjay Suri was born on 6 April 1971 in Srinagar, Kashmir, where he spent 19 years of his life. He has an elder brother and an elder sister. Living in Srinagar, he developed a strong love for nature and the outdoors. As a child, Suri was a star squash player and was on his school and state teams. In 1990, his father was killed in a terrorist attack and the family was forced to flee to Jammu where they briefly lived in a refugee camp. They then shifted to Delhi.

When Suri moved to New Delhi in 1990, he was thrust into the world of modelling. He modelled for many companies including Gillette, Nilkamal Furniture, Times of India, Philishave, and Nescafe.

1999 witnessed Suri’s breakthrough in Bollywood with a supporting role in the movie Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi, co-starring with Rinke Khanna and Dino Morea. Although the movie flopped, Suri was noticed. His next films were Daman: A Victim of Marital Violence (2001), Filhaal… and the musical Dil Vil Pyar Vyar (2002).

In 2005, he delivered a critically acclaimed performance in My Brother… Nikhil, as a homosexual who happens to be HIV positive, once again co-starring Juhi Chawla. The movie received unanimous praise among Indian film critics. The movie fared decently in Mumbai, but was a failure elsewhere in India.

Suri and Onir (who also directed My Brother Nikhil) also worked on Sorry Bhai! and under the banner of Anticlock Films have produced I Am, which weaves together four stories on different topical issues. With this film they have ventured into a new mode of production involving crowdsourcing, a concept that had not been explored before in Indian cinema. The movie released on 29 April 2011 and went on to win the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi.