His father Ken Adams, a turner and fitter, worked at various CEGB power stations; his mother Joan (née Mooney) was a school secretary.

He took this name because another Simon Adams was registered with the acting trade union, Equity, and he admired a German actor with the surname Ritter.

[5] Ritter's screen work included roles in Nowhere Boy, the 2007 television serial Instinct,[6] the comedy drama Pulling and the role of Pistol in Henry IV, Part II and Henry V in BBC Two's cycle of William Shakespeare's history plays, The Hollow Crown; The Daily Telegraph described Ritter as "an actor who is surely destined for greatness very soon.

His Pistol conveyed perfectly the shock of a man who reluctantly had left behind the rowdy cheer of Eastcheap, and found himself in middle age contemplating the melancholy of a medieval autumn.

"[7] Ritter also played comic actor Eric Sykes in Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This and took a lead role in BBC One's 2014 serialised Cold War spy drama, The Game.

[8][9] From 2005 to 2006, Ritter played Otis Gardiner in the original Royal National Theatre production of Helen Edmundson's Coram Boy, for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award.

[12] In 2012, he appeared as the protagonist's father in the stage version of Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the National Theatre[13] and in 2013 as John Major in the premiere of Peter Morgan's The Audience.