He played the male lead role of Ben Campbell in 21 (2008), Gavin Kossef in Crossing Over (2009), The Way Back (2010), and co-starred in the epic science fiction film Cloud Atlas (2012).

Other credits include Stonehearst Asylum (2013), London Fields (2014), Close to the Enemy (2016), Feed the Beast (2016), Geostorm (2017), Kidnapping Freddy Heineken (2018), and JT LeRoy (2018), Berlin, I Love You (2019), The Other Me (2022), and Alone Together (2022).

In 2007, he was cast in Julie Taymor's musical Across the Universe,[4] portraying Jude Feeny, a young man who travels to the US amid the raging throes of the late 1960s and falls in love with a sheltered American teenager, Lucy, played by Evan Rachel Wood.

He also played the male lead role of Ben Campbell in a film about five MIT students who, by counting cards, take Las Vegas casinos co-starring Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne, in 21.

Set in Los Angeles, the story revolves around immigrants from different countries and backgrounds who share a common bond: they are all desperately trying to gain legal-immigrant status.

Sturgess appears as Jamie Morgan, a young man whose life has always been blighted by the large, heart-shaped port wine birthmark on his face and sells his soul to the devil.

The character Sturgess plays is based on Sławomir Rawicz, a young Polish officer who escaped from a Russian gulag during World War II.

It was originally slated for release in 2011,[13] A third film project in 2010 was Promised Land, to be directed by Michael Winterbottom and, according to Variety, would "recount the lead up to the 1948 partition of Palestine and the subsequent creation of the state of Israel".

In the autumn, Sturgess went to Los Angeles to film Electric Slide, directed by Tristan Patterson and co-starring Isabel Lucas and Chloe Sevigny.

He appeared in the Mathew Cullen directed London Fields,[8] based on the novel by Martin Amis, co-starring Amber Heard and Billy Bob Thornton.

He portrayed Dutch criminal Cor van Hout in Kidnapping Freddy Heineken,[8] filmed in Belgium and New Orleans, directed by Daniel Alfredson and co-starring Sam Worthington and Anthony Hopkins.