Blood Diamond
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
50 free Blood Diamond trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Blood Diamond arrived in 2006 as a chase thriller with a conscience. Leonardo DiCaprio's smuggler Danny Archer and Djimon Hounsou's Solomon Vandy hunt for a single hidden gem while Sierra Leone's civil war rages around them, and a reporter tries to follow the stones all the way to the jewelry counter. The film earned Oscar nominations and made a lot of people look twice at where their diamonds come from. This quiz covers the whole picture. Plot questions follow Archer, Solomon and Maddy Bowen from the rebel mining camps to the final scenes. Cast and crew questions cover the actors, their other famous roles, the awards race and how the script reached the screen. A last group looks at the true story: the rebels, the mercenaries, the trials and the campaign to keep conflict stones off the market. It is pitched at anyone who has seen the film, whether for a movie night rewatch or a classroom unit on conflict diamonds. The first questions are the gentlest, later ones reward close viewers, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Blood Diamond, what color is the enormous rough diamond that Solomon Vandy finds while mining a river?
Pink
Pink is the color of the stone that every character ends up chasing. Smuggler Danny Archer hears about it in prison and arranges Solomon's release to get at it.
Q 02Blood Diamond's smuggler Danny Archer was born in Rhodesia, a country known by what name today?
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is the modern name of Archer's birthplace. He tells Maddy Bowen that rebels killed his parents, and that he fled to South Africa as a child.
Q 03Leonardo DiCaprio earned two Golden Globe nominations in one category for Blood Diamond and which other 2006 film?
The Departed
The Departed, Martin Scorsese's Boston crime thriller, went on to win Best Picture. Oscar voters, though, nominated DiCaprio for playing Danny Archer instead.
Q 04Which rapper won a Grammy for Diamonds from Sierra Leone, a 2005 single built on a James Bond theme sample?
Kanye West
Kanye West first wrote the song about his record label, then re-recorded it after learning about blood diamonds. It samples Shirley Bassey's Diamonds Are Forever and won Best Rap Song.
Q 05Which Oscar winner for A Beautiful Mind plays journalist Maddy Bowen opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond?
Jennifer Connelly
Jennifer Connelly won her Oscar as Alicia Nash, the wife of mathematician John Nash. Her Blood Diamond reporter helps Archer in exchange for evidence about the illicit diamond trade.
Q 06In Blood Diamond, rebels hack off villagers' hands to keep them away from which national event?
Elections
Elections were the target, since the rebels wanted to scare villagers out of voting. Sierra Leone's real RUF became notorious for amputating the limbs of civilians.
Q 07Which supermodel told the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2010 about diamonds given to her by unknown men?
Naomi Campbell
Naomi Campbell said she took the stones for a gift and later handed them to the head of a children's charity. Prosecutors believed they were blood diamonds sent by the former president on trial.
Q 08Blood Diamond star Djimon Hounsou played Juba, the friend of Maximus, in which Ridley Scott epic?
Gladiator
Gladiator cast Hounsou as a Numidian fighter who befriends the hero in the arena. Six years later his turn as Solomon Vandy brought him a second Oscar nomination.
Q 09Arnold Vosloo, Blood Diamond's mercenary boss Colonel Coetzee, is best known as the villain Imhotep in which film?
The Mummy
The Mummy made Vosloo a go-to screen villain after he emigrated to the United States. In Blood Diamond his colonel runs a private army hired by Sierra Leone's government.
Q 10Before rebels force him into a diamond mining camp in Blood Diamond, how does Solomon Vandy earn his living?
As a fisherman
As a fisherman from the village of Shenge, Solomon is torn from his family and set to work under a warlord. An early version of the story made the character a farmer instead.
Q 11Which RUF warlord in Blood Diamond runs the mining camp where Solomon Vandy is forced to dig for gems?
Captain Poison
Captain Poison, played by English actor David Harewood, tries to seize Solomon's find for himself. A raid by government troops then lands both men in the same prison.
Q 12Which capital city, where Danny Archer and Solomon Vandy meet in prison, falls to the rebels in Blood Diamond?
Freetown
Freetown began in the late 1700s as a settlement for freed slaves, hence the name. The film restages the rebel assault on Sierra Leone's capital in January 1999.
Q 13In Blood Diamond, what does Solomon Vandy use to kill the warlord who enslaved him and stole his son?
A shovel
Q 21Which South African port city, also a Blood Diamond filming location, does Danny Archer visit to meet Colonel Coetzee?
Cape Town
Cape Town is where Coetzee, once Archer's army commander, now runs a private military company. He claims Solomon's stone as payback for the smuggling run that Archer botched.
Q 22In which country does Maddy Bowen help Solomon Vandy track down his family in a refugee camp in Blood Diamond?
Guinea
Guinea is where the search for his remaining family ends, though his son is missing. Rebels have carried the boy off to fight for them.
Q 23As government troops raid the rebel mining camp in Blood Diamond, what does Solomon Vandy do with his diamond?
He buries it
A shovel becomes Solomon's weapon as mercenaries storm the rebel camp. He has just found his son there, brainwashed and refusing to acknowledge his own father.
Q 14In which city does Solomon Vandy finally trade his diamond for money and his family at the end of Blood Diamond?
London
London is where Solomon meets a representative of the Van de Kaap mining company. The crew filmed scenes in the city too, far from the main shoot in southern Africa.
Q 15Which director of Glory and The Last Samurai made Blood Diamond after first being hired to rewrite its script?
Edward Zwick
Edward Zwick grew so interested in the story while rewriting it with Marshall Herskovitz that he agreed to direct the film as well.
Q 16Leonardo DiCaprio lost the Best Actor Oscar for Blood Diamond; which film finally won it for him almost a decade later?
The Revenant
The Revenant, a survival drama, ended his run of acting nominations without a win. The same role brought him a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and a Screen Actors Guild award.
Q 17Djimon Hounsou of Blood Diamond first won wide notice as Cinqué in which Steven Spielberg historical drama?
Amistad
Amistad cast him as the leader of an uprising aboard a slave ship. Its captives were Mende tribesmen, the same people as his Blood Diamond character, Solomon Vandy.
Q 18Which actor beat Blood Diamond's Leonardo DiCaprio to the Best Actor Oscar by playing Ugandan dictator Idi Amin?
Forest Whitaker
Forest Whitaker won for The Last King of Scotland, which premiered in Uganda two days before the ceremony. He also took the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild awards.
Q 19Which James Bond film, released four years before Blood Diamond, also turns on African conflict diamonds?
Die Another Day
Die Another Day opens with a North Korean colonel trading weapons for the stones. Its billionaire villain later turns out to have built his fortune on them.
Q 20In Blood Diamond, what becomes of Danny Archer after he gives the diamond to Solomon Vandy?
He dies of his wounds
He dies of his wounds while Solomon and his son are flown to safety. His last act is a phone call to Maddy Bowen, asking her to help Solomon and telling her to finish her article.
He buries it moments before the soldiers capture him, so only he knows where the stone lies. That secret is why Danny Archer later seeks him out as a partner.
Q 24How does Maddy Bowen get proof of the Van de Kaap company's dealings at the end of Blood Diamond?
She photographs the deal
She photographs the deal as Solomon hands over the stone, then publishes the pictures in her article. The film closes with Solomon addressing a conference to a standing ovation.
Q 25David Harewood, the warlord of Blood Diamond, later played CIA counterterrorism chief David Estes in which TV drama?
Homeland
Homeland brought Harewood to American audiences from 2011. Years earlier he had become the first black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre.
Q 26Which Welsh actor, seen as Tony Blair in The Queen the same year, plays Rupert Simmons in Blood Diamond?
Michael Sheen
Michael Sheen played the prime minister in three films for writer Peter Morgan, and The Queen was the one that brought him international attention.
Q 27Which country, where the crew worked in and around Maputo, doubled for Sierra Leone during the Blood Diamond shoot?
Mozambique
Mozambique hosted the shoot alongside South Africa. While filming there, Leonardo DiCaprio worked with 24 orphaned children from the SOS Children's Village in Maputo.
Q 28Which real diamond mining giant did Blood Diamond screenwriter Charles Leavitt expect his script to offend?
De Beers
De Beers was the company Leavitt had most in mind. He researched the trade at length and kept to the facts, aware that powerful mining corporations might sue.
Q 29Which former Liberian president was sentenced to 50 years in prison for war crimes in Sierra Leone's civil war?
Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor gave the RUF substantial help from its creation, and the United Nations accused his government of backing the rebels through the diamond trade.
Q 30Which South African mining town hosts the conference where Solomon Vandy speaks at the end of Blood Diamond?
Kimberley
Kimberley hosted a real meeting in 2000 that produced a certification scheme for rough diamonds, one that still carries the town's name. The film gives Solomon a standing ovation there.