Anthony Hopkins
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50 free Anthony Hopkins trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Anthony Hopkins spent decades as a respected stage and television actor before one chilling screen villain made him a household name in his fifties. Since then he has played presidents, pontiffs, servants, monarchs and gods, and collected the film industry's highest honours along the way. This quiz covers the whole career: the Oscar wins and the nominations that got away, the famous co-stars and directors, the television and theatre work that came first, and the roles drawn from real history. It also looks at the man himself, from his childhood in Wales to his music and his life abroad. It is written for film fans, awards-season obsessives and anyone who has ever been unsettled by one of his quieter performances. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more than when you arrived.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which film won Anthony Hopkins his first Best Actor Oscar and swept all five major Academy Awards?
The Silence of the Lambs
The Silence of the Lambs was only the third film to win Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay together. The first two were It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Q 02Anthony Hopkins won his second Best Actor Oscar for The Father, playing a man living with which condition?
Dementia
Dementia shapes The Father, which Florian Zeller adapted from his own 2012 play Le Père. Hopkins's character in the film is also named Anthony.
Q 03Which Marvel character did Anthony Hopkins play in three Thor films released between 2011 and 2017?
Odin
Odin rules Asgard in the films, and Hopkins admitted he knew nothing of the comics before taking the part. He said he found a personal resonance in the stern king.
Q 04Which actress won an Oscar as FBI trainee Clarice Starling opposite Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter?
Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster got the part only after Michelle Pfeiffer and Meg Ryan had each turned it down, uneasy about the gruesome subject matter.
Q 05Which US president did Anthony Hopkins play in Oliver Stone's 1995 biopic, earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon looked an odd fit for a Welshman, but Oliver Stone told Hopkins that his outsider quality was exactly why he wanted him for the part.
Q 06Which actor played Death in human form opposite Anthony Hopkins's media tycoon in the 1998 film Meet Joe Black?
Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt had already starred with Hopkins in the 1994 Western drama Legends of the Fall. Meet Joe Black is based on the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday.
Q 07In which HBO series did Anthony Hopkins play Robert Ford, co-founder of a theme park staffed by lifelike androids?
Westworld
Westworld grew out of a 1973 film written and directed by Michael Crichton. Playing the park's director earned Hopkins an Emmy nomination.
Q 08Which honour did Queen Elizabeth II give Anthony Hopkins at Buckingham Palace in 1993 for services to the arts?
A knighthood
A knighthood made him Sir Anthony, and an overawed Steven Spielberg insisted on using the title throughout the Amistad shoot rather than call him Tony.
Q 09Which actor did Anthony Hopkins's ageing swordsman train as his successor in the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro?
Antonio Banderas
Antonio Banderas inherited the mask from Hopkins's Don Diego de la Vega. To prepare, he practised for four months with Spain's Olympic fencing team.
Q 10The 2012 biopic starring Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock follows the director during the making of which film?
Psycho
Psycho was filmed in 1959, and the biopic centres on Hitchcock's marriage to Alma Reville, his wife and collaborator, who is played by Helen Mirren.
Q 11Anthony Hopkins was born on New Year's Eve 1937 in which Welsh town known for its vast steelworks?
Port Talbot
Port Talbot has been called fertile ground for movie stars. Hopkins was born in its Margam district, and he later gave that name to one of his own compositions.
Q 12Which pope did Anthony Hopkins play opposite Jonathan Pryce in the 2019 Netflix film The Two Popes?
Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI is shown confiding his plan to abdicate to the cardinal who will succeed him. Hopkins and Pryce, both Welshmen, were each Oscar-nominated for the film.
Q 13Which character from Bram Stoker's novel did Anthony Hopkins play in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film of Dracula?
Van Helsing
Q 21What was the trade of Anthony Hopkins's father Richard, whose hardened, broken hands the actor says keep him humble?
A baker
A baker in South Wales, Richard Hopkins gave his son the working-class values that the actor says have underscored his whole life.
Q 22Which stage legend invited Anthony Hopkins to join the National Theatre in 1965 and made him his understudy?
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier fell ill with appendicitis in 1967, so his understudy went on in The Dance of Death. Olivier later wrote that the newcomer walked away with the part.
Q 23Which Welsh film star, whom Anthony Hopkins first met at 15, inspired him to become an actor?
Richard Burton
Van Helsing is the professor summoned to end the vampire's reign of terror in London. Hopkins also plays a Romanian Orthodox priest in the same film.
Q 14What job does Anthony Hopkins's character Stevens hold at Darlington Hall in the film The Remains of the Day?
Butler
Butler Stevens is so repressed that he never admits his feelings for the housekeeper, Miss Kenton. Morgan Freeman has called the performance a lesson in stillness.
Q 15Which actress starred opposite Anthony Hopkins in both Howards End and The Remains of the Day?
Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson won the Best Actress Oscar for Howards End, then was nominated again a year later for her second Merchant Ivory film with Hopkins.
Q 16Which fellow nominee did Anthony Hopkins pay tribute to in the video accepting his Best Actor Oscar in 2021?
Chadwick Boseman
Chadwick Boseman had died the previous year and was considered the strong frontrunner for the award. Hopkins, at home in Wales, posted his thanks the day after the ceremony.
Q 17What did Anthony Hopkins give up for good just after Christmas 1975, a decision he marked 50 years later?
Alcohol
Alcohol nearly killed him when he drove in a drunken blackout, so he got help and has been sober ever since. In 2025 he urged anyone living with addiction to choose life.
Q 18Which country's citizenship did Welsh-born Anthony Hopkins take in April 2000 while remaining a British citizen?
United States
United States citizenship followed his move back across the Atlantic after his 1990s film success. He had first tried Hollywood in the late 1970s, then returned to London.
Q 19Which instrument did the schoolboy Anthony Hopkins prefer to his studies, years before composing for orchestras?
Piano
Piano, painting and drawing all appealed to him more than lessons. He has said he would have gone to music college had he been clever enough at school.
Q 20Which actress plays Anne, the daughter of Anthony Hopkins's character, in the 2020 drama The Father?
Olivia Colman
Olivia Colman was acclaimed alongside Hopkins for the film, and he said that making it with her and director Florian Zeller might have been the highlight of his life.
Richard Burton grew up near the same town, yet Hopkins says the two barely knew each other. They met again in the 1970s, when Burton took over one of his Broadway roles.
Q 24Which former US president did Anthony Hopkins play in Steven Spielberg's 1997 courtroom drama Amistad?
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams argues for the captives' freedom, and Hopkins astounded the crew by delivering the seven-page courtroom speech in one go. It brought him a Supporting Actor nomination.
Q 25Which actor beat Anthony Hopkins, nominated for The Remains of the Day, to the Best Actor Oscar in 1994?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks won for Philadelphia on a night dominated by Schindler's List. The Remains of the Day had eight nominations, tied for second-most that year.
Q 26Whose record as the oldest Best Actor Oscar winner, set with On Golden Pond, did Anthony Hopkins break in 2021?
Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda was 76 when he won for his final film role, and too ill to attend. Hopkins took the record at 83, and he was not at his ceremony either.
Q 27Which director cast Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter and won the Best Director Oscar for the 1991 thriller?
Jonathan Demme
Jonathan Demme offered Hopkins the role on the strength of his performance in The Elephant Man, made a decade earlier.
Q 28Which actress took over the role of Clarice Starling opposite Anthony Hopkins in the 2001 sequel Hannibal?
Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore had already acted with Hopkins in Surviving Picasso, and stepped in when the original Starling declined to return for the sequel.
Q 29Which novelist created Hannibal Lecter, the character Anthony Hopkins played in three films?
Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris avoids publicity so thoroughly that he gave very few interviews between 1976 and 2019. He was reportedly pleased with how Hopkins played his villain.
Q 30Which director cast Anthony Hopkins as surgeon Frederick Treves in the 1980 drama The Elephant Man?
David Lynch
David Lynch made the film with Mel Brooks as executive producer. Brooks went uncredited so that audiences would not expect one of his comedies.