Sudduth moved to Chicago in December 1985 aspiring to work with the acclaimed Steppenwolf Theater Company. During his four and a half years in Chicago, Sudduth played in many stage productions including Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Emily Mann's Execution of Justice, and Nebraska (by Screenwriter John Logan, who penned The Aviator). He has appeared in stage adaptations of The Grapes of Wrath, On the Waterfront and A Clockwork Orange, and acted in the 1999 Broadway production of The Iceman Cometh (alongside Kevin Spacey) and the 2003 debut performance of Woody Allen's play Riverside Drive (starring with Paul Reiser). He also appeared in Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center (with Helen Hunt).
The multi-talented Sudduth is also a singer-songwriter; his acoustic-rock band Minus Ted has released three albums: Hope and Damage (1994), Really Really (1999) and Hope and Damage Revisited (2005). The last two are available on iTunes. He was a member of New York's Rumble in the Redroom comedy troupe (1996–99) and has recorded several notable audio books including one short story in the acclaimed Stephen King collection, Just After Sunset and Peter Canellos's biography of Ted Kennedy, Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy, both for Simon & Schuster.
Sudduth's movie career has seen him play numerous small parts in 54 (1998), A Cool, Dry Place (1998), and Spike Lee's Clockers (1995), as well larger roles with Robert De Niro in Ronin (1998) and Flawless (1999). Sudduth, who is a keen amateur racing/stunt driver, performed nearly all of the driving his character does in Ronin.
In 2008, Sudduth created the role of Captain George Brackett in the Tony-Award-winning revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific at Lincoln Center. Sudduth finished the year appearing in the New York premiere of Prayer for My Enemy, a play by Craig Lucas. The play was the second time Sudduth worked with Director Bartlett Sher who had also directed South Pacific. The production ran at the off-Broadway theater Playwright's Horizons from November 14 to December 21 and also featured Victoria Clark, Michele Pawk, and Jonathan Groff. In the play, Sudduth played a recovering alcoholic coping with his son's return from the Iraq War.
