She played Nancy Astley in the BBC drama Tipping the Velvet, and Millie in the ITV series The Bletchley Circle.
[4] Stirling starred as Lady Chiltern in a 2010 production of An Ideal Husband at the Vaudeville Theatre, for which she received her second nomination for a Laurence Olivier Award.
[10][9] From February to April 2012, she appeared as Sylvia alongside Mark Gatiss, Tobias Menzies, and Nancy Carroll in The Recruiting Officer, the production at the Donmar Warehouse directed by newly appointed artistic director Josie Rourke.
[2] Other film appearances include Maybe Baby, Redemption Road (2001), Complicity (with her Tipping the Velvet co-star Keeley Hawes), Another Life (with Vanity Fair actress Natasha Little), The Triumph of Love (with Mira Sorvino), as Mary Jones in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, and as Anna in Snow White and the Huntsman.
[11] In 2014, Stirling portrayed Kate Wilkinson in the Cold War spy thriller television series The Game,[9] and appeared in the BBC Four comedy drama Detectorists as Becky, initially girlfriend, then wife, of Andy (played by Mackenzie Crook), also featuring alongside her mother, Diana Rigg, who played Becky's mother.
[12] In 2015, Stirling played the part of Arabella Yount, the spendthrift wife of a banker, in the three-part BBC series Capital based on John Lanchester's novel of the same name.
Stirling is an occasional interviewer on the BBC Radio 4 chat show Loose Ends,[4] and presented the station's programme Stage Door in December 2012.
In 2014, Stirling appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 4's Midweek with Libby Purves, Roger Bannister and Kevin Warwick.