Sharpe read Classics at the University of Cambridge, where he was the President of the Footlights Revue. He graduated in 2008 and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company for their 2008/2009 season. Sharpe spent a year at the RSC and appeared in such plays as The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice and The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, in which he played a young Isaac Newton. He played the character of Yuki Reid in BBC medical drama Casualty.
In 2009, he directed and co-wrote, along with his friend Tom Kingsley, a short film Cockroach. The pair's first feature-length film, Black Pond, starring Chris Langham, was shown at The Prince Charles Cinema from November 2011. Shortly after, he was co-nominated for a BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for the film.
