Strickland was born to a Greek mother and British father, both teachers, and grew up in Reading, Berkshire, where he was a member of Progress Theatre, directing his own adaptation of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

[4] His first feature, the low-budget rural revenge drama Katalin Varga, was financed by an inheritance from an uncle and filmed in Romania over a period of 17 days in 2006.

[8] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described Berberian Sound Studio as marking Strickland's emergence as "a key British film-maker of his generation".

[9] His third feature, the chamber drama The Duke of Burgundy, was an homage to Jess Franco starring Sidse Babett Knudsen and Chiara D'Anna.

[11][12] In 2018, Strickland released In Fabric, a psychological horror film about a haunted dress purchased in a London department store.