[9] Sturridge began his career working 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.

However in 2006, two months into production, New Regency and 20th Century Fox, fearing the gamble of spending over $100 million on a film starring an unknown actor,[10] replaced him with the "more prominent" Hayden Christensen.

[11] 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,[12] appearing as a character loosely modelled after the teenage killers at Columbine High School.

He also played a role loosely based on poet Allen Ginsberg in Walter Salles's 2012 film adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

[13] In January 2021, Sturridge was confirmed to be playing Dream of The Endless / Lord Morpheus in the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman.