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 thrillerLike Minds, also known by the title of Murderous Intent. It tells the story of two boys, Alex 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. He was originally cast as the lead in the sci-fitrilogyJumper. However, 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, replaced him with the "more prominent" Hayden Christensen. In 2009, he appeared as Carl, one of the lead roles in the Richard Curtis comedy, The Boat That Rocked, 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. He appeared alongside Rachel Bilson in the 2011 indie-romance, Waiting for Forever. 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. In spring 2013, he starred in the Broadway play Orphans as Phillip, who is developmentally disabled, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for his performance. In 2017, he starred as Winston Smith in the Broadway production of 1984. As of 2019, Sturridge is starring opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in the Broadway play Sea Wall/A Life.
Personal life
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.
