Posy Sterling’s year is off to a cracking start. Not only is the British actress coming off the back of December’s BIFA win, where she nabbed the Breakthrough Performance award for her work in Daisy-May Hudson’s debut Lollipop, but she has also recently been selected as one of the nominees for BAFTA’s EE Rising Star Award. Previous nominees include Mikey Madison, Jacob Elordi, Aimee Lou Wood and Ariana DeBose.
She’s also just wrapped three-part Channel 4 factual drama Dirty Business, from Partygate outfit Halcyon Heart, with David Thewlis, Jason Watkins and Asim Chaudhry, The project, which is expected to air next month, is based on a decade-long investigation into England’s water companies and the real stories of whistleblowers and victims who believe their lives have been destroyed after encountering sewage-polluted water.
It’s an impressive achievement for the actress, who also had a role in 2024’s addiction drama The Outrun with Saoirse Ronan. Lollipop marks her first leading role in a feature film and while the critically-acclaimed low-budget indie may not have enticed BAFTA voters (the film was shutout of the BAFTA longlist this year), Sterling’s heart-wrenching performance as a woman fighting to regain custody of her children in a broken system has compelled critics. It’s a piercing look at marginalized people who fall through the cracks of society and puts a spotlight on institutional failure for young mothers on the wrong side of the criminal justice system. But, for Sterling, she’s hopeful it will create meaningful change.
“They say you’re three paychecks away from being homeless and sometimes, with the choices you make, eventually you’re only left with bad choices,” Sterling tells Deadline. “There are so many people who resonate with this story and that just honestly breaks my heart.”
Lollipop, which was released by MetFilm Distribution in June 2025, follows Molly, a young mother in east London who is released from prison after serving four months for a crime we don’t know about. Upon release, she assumes she will be able to pick her children up from foster care but, instead, she finds herself in a major Catch-22: She can’t get housing because she doesn’t have her kids living with her, but she can’t get them back without a roof over her head. When Molly reconnects with her childhood friend and fellow single mother Amina (Idil Ahmed), the two women join forces to take destiny into their own hands.
“It’s a film about mothers doing their best and, as Molly says in the film, sometimes your best isn’t good enough,” says Sterling. “It’s very painful but there is also a joy and a lightness to it and it offers up some hopeful messages in the possibility of a future of generational healing.”
‘Lollipop’
Sterling, who says she submerged herself in ice baths every day at 4am during filming to “reset her nervous system”, has been drawn to socially relevant stories since she started her career. She trained at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts and has done extensive work in theatre, including tours with London’s the Donmar Warehouse for The Cherry Orchard, and Clean Break, a women’s theatre company that focuses on telling stories of imprisoned women and working with women affected by the criminal justice system. It was at the latter that Sterling got her first professional stage gig on a play called Sweatbox.
In that play, Sterling played a pregnant woman on her way from court to prison. “I did a lot of research around that, and I found a lot of things that I couldn’t forget or ignore, so this issue was very much on my heart. Without sounding too cliché, I honestly think the role of Molly found me.”
The third tour of Sweatbox was canceled because of Covid-19, but it was then made into a short film that aired on YouTube. It was off of that video that Lollipop casting director Lucy Pardee (American Honey, Dirty God) spotted Sterling.
Sterling admits that she felt a “very strong connection” to Hudson’s script and her work with Clean Break, which connected her to many real-life people like Molly, informed her response to it.
“Daisy-May’s script has such intricacies and detailed mannerisms that you felt the detail of action and what I love is that she’s not pointing figures. There’s not much blame in the film and therefore, there’s a lot more room for conversation to be had.”
Indeed, Lollipop veers away from depicting the working class in the stereotypical and often damaging ways that they are typically portrayed on UK screens. When the audience first meets Molly, we know she’s been in prison for four months, but we never find out the reason.
“When we look at cases like Molly’s, women who serve these short sentences end up serving a lifetime because they lose their housing and the system uses wording such as, ‘You’ve made yourself intentionally homeless.’ Then they are in a situation where they are homeless and they’re being told they can’t get their children back until they find somewhere to live but they are only entitled to a one-bedroom flat and they can’t have their children in a home unless they have two-bedrooms.
“It’s an awful predicament that so many young women face. More than 5,000 women in the UK signed the custody of their children away in the last two years and most of them didn’t realize what they were signing.”
Earlier this month, Hudson, Sterling and Ahmed attended a Parliamentary debate with MP Jess Asato, the Birth Companions Institute and Project Accountability to discuss children’s social care, maternal imprisonment, the family courts, housing provision and intergenerational cycles of trauma.
They called for more support and guidance for mothers on the wrong side of the criminal justice system because “there’s not enough information, guidance or even education for this subject matter or for what actually happens.”
Posy Sterling, Daisy-May Hudson & Idil Ahmed at a Parliamentary debate in January 2026.
Sterling says the experience was a positive one. “It felt like there were some clear, direct steps being discussed. So, that’s hopeful and inspiring. It was very moving being in the room.”
‘Dirty Business’
For Sterling’s next role in Dirty Business, which airs next month, she plays Julie Preen, the real-life mother of 8-year-old Heather Preen, who died after contacting E.coli 0157. Heather had been playing on a beach where, days earlier, a nearby storm pipe had discharged into the sea. The Preen family believe their daughter’s death was the result of her coming into contact with raw sewage.
Sterling gets emotional when speaking about the role, and says she got to know the real Julie very well in her preparation for the role. “I had to play this as honestly as I could,” she says tearfully. “Tom McKay, who plays Julie’s husband Mark, and I have been on such a journey with this. We’ve worked with such a wonderful team on this project and Heather has really been at the core of this story.”
Sterling is hopeful that the series will shed a light on the illegal actions of Britain’s water companies that are having widespread damage on the environment and people’s health. Last year, raw sewage was discharged into rivers and coastal waters in England for nearly 4 million hours.
“Most of the dumping that these water companies are doing is illegal,” she says. “Water companies have been prosecuted at least 59 times just in 2025, but they continue to keep dumping raw sewage out there.”
She adds: “I feel driven to projects like this because I care deeply about the subject matter and, in both projects – Dirty Business and Lollipop –, I have known about the subject matter quite extensively before the projects came to me. So, when there are roles where real people are infused at the heart of it, it just oozes like an honesty that I have to be a part of. Especially when there’s a responsibility with it too. Ultimately, these are incredibly uncomfortable conversations that have to be held with a very clear and safe container. And those uncomfortable conversations can open doors to make change, and I want to help be a part of that.”
