His father, Canon John Ovenden, is a chaplain to the Queen of England.

Has an exceptional tenor singing voice and plays trumpet, trombone and piano to Grade 8.

He looked set to have a career in Music until he chose to study at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art to learn more about stagecraft.

One starred in a Diet Coke advert in the UK, which gained him a massive female fanbase.

Won choral scholarships to Eton and New College Oxford.

　Tom 出生在英国威尔士的Aberystwyth，但是是在Cardiff长大的。他有一个叫做Joseph的弟弟和一个叫做Ruth的妹妹。

在他2009年6月从威尔士皇家音乐及戏剧学院 (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama）毕业前，他花了一年时间在伦敦大学中央演讲与戏剧学院(Central School of Speech and Drama )接受训练。在还是学生时，他在和 Jaime Winstone 以及Richard Harrigton出演了电影Daddy‘s Girl(2006)，并获得了英国电影和电视艺术学院奖（BAFTA)最佳影片奖。同时他的短片Watch Me还获得了 BAFTA Cymru最佳短片奖的提名。

Essex boy Simon is the elder of the two acting Merrells brothers, born in 1966, two years before his sibling Jason. Though there was no acting background in the family both boys were keen to tread the boards at an early age, attending Saturday morning drama classes, then a Sylvia Young school, and, in Simon's case, drama college, though on graduation he spent some time travelling abroad, and, on return, working as a mini-cab driver to earn the money to go back to Mexico to join a girlfriend who was in the circus there. He eventually went back to acting however, and turned professional in 1994. He has been particularly prolific on stage with such prestigious organizations as the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, for whom he played Benedick to Sally Anne Triplett's Beatrice in 'Much About Nothing' and acting with Jason for the first time in fourteen years as real-life brothers in 'The Comedy of Errors', both in 2007. On television he became well-known in the British soap opera 'Family Affairs'.