Sturridge began as a child actor and he was in the 1996 television adaptation of Gulliver's Travels, directed by his Father and co-starring his mother. He reemerged in 2004 with Vanity Fair and Being Julia. In 2005 he played william Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke in BBC4's A Waste of Shame.

In 2006, he played the role of Nigel in the psychological thriller Like Minds, also known by the title of Murderous Intent. It tells the story of two boys, Alex (played by Eddie Redmayne) and Nigel, placed together as room-mates, much to Alex's objections. Alex is horrified and yet fascinated with the ritual-influenced deaths that begin to occur around them, and when Nigel himself is murdered, Alex is blamed.

In 2009, he appeared as Carl, one of the lead roles in the Richard Curtis comedy, The Boat That Rocked, (known as Pirate Radio. in the United States) alongside Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans and Philip Seymour Hoffman. In September, 2009, he made his stage debut in Punk Rock, a then newly dramatised play by Simon Stephens at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, appearing as a character loosely modelled after the teenage killers at Columbine High School. For that performance, he was nominated for Most Outstanding Newcomer in the 2009 Evening Standard Awards, and won the 2009 Critics' Circle Theatre Award in that same category.

In 2011, Sturridge began dating Actress Sienna Miller. Their daughter, Marlowe Ottoline Layng Sturridge, was born in July 2012. Sturridge's maternal grandparents are actors Anthony Nicholls and Faith Kent, and his great-grandfather is photojournalist Horace Nicholls.