50 free Cary Grant trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Cary Grant trivia quiz follows the boy born Archibald Leach in a Bristol suburb to the man the American Film Institute ranked the second-greatest male star of Hollywood's Golden Age. It starts with the childhood he rarely discussed: the mother he was told was dead, the expulsion from Fairfield Grammar School, the acrobatic troupe that took him to New York on the same ship as Douglas Fairbanks, the stilt-walking on Coney Island and the Broadway flops that led to a Paramount contract and a new name. From there it covers the career: Mae West and Marlene Dietrich, the decision to go freelance, the screwball run of The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story, the two Oscar nominations, the four Hitchcock films from Suspicion to North by Northwest, the Savile Row suit, the retirement after Charade and Father Goose, and the Bond role he was offered first. It also asks about the five marriages, 'Cash and Cary', Randolph Scott and Bachelor Hall, the LSD sessions, the Fabergé boardroom, the honorary Oscar Frank Sinatra presented, and the night in Davenport, Iowa, where it ended. Questions range from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia article on Cary Grant.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Cary Grant's birth name?
Archibald Alec Leach
He ad-libbed the line 'the last man who said that to me was Archie Leach' in His Girl Friday, and legally became Cary Grant only when naturalised in 1942.
Q 02In which English city was Cary Grant born in 1904?
Bristol
A statue by Graham Ibbeson stands in the city's Millennium Square, and the biennial Cary Comes Home Festival started there in 2014.
Q 03What did Cary Grant's father tell him had happened to his mother when the boy was nine?
That she had gone away on a long holiday
She had actually been placed in a mental institution; Grant did not learn she was alive until he was 31 and arranged her release in 1935.
Q 04How old was Cary Grant when he discovered his mother was still alive?
31
His father confessed the lie shortly before his own death; Grant visited her regularly afterwards, including after filming Gunga Din.
Q 05From which institution was the 14-year-old Archie Leach expelled in March 1918?
Fairfield Grammar
Explanations included being found in the girls' lavatory; he rejoined the Pender acrobatic troupe three days later.
Q 06What skill did young Cary Grant train in with the Bob Pender Stage Troupe?
Stilt walking
He later stilt-walked in a greatcoat and sandwich board to pull crowds onto Coney Island's boardwalk for Steeplechase Park.
Q 07Which Hollywood couple were aboard the RMS Olympic when 16-year-old Cary Grant sailed to America in 1920?
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford
He played shuffleboard with Fairbanks, who became his first role model for 'masculine glamour'.
Q 08What nicknames did Grant pick up in vaudeville because he was sometimes mistaken for an Australian?
Kangaroo and Boomerang
He was later cast as an Australian in the 1927 musical Golden Dawn for $75 a week; his mid-Atlantic accent came from years in British and American music halls.
Q 09Which studio signed the 27-year-old Grant in December 1931 and made him change his name?
Paramount
B. P. Schulberg wanted something 'more all-American like Gary Cooper', and they settled on Cary Grant.
Q 10What role did Cary Grant play in his 1932 feature debut, This Is the Night?
An Olympic javelin thrower
He disliked the part and threatened to quit Hollywood until Variety called him a 'potential femme rave'.
Q 11Which star claimed to have discovered Cary Grant by casting him in She Done Him Wrong (1933)?
Mae West
I'm No Angel is credited with saving Paramount from bankruptcy and got Grant a raise from $450 to $750 a week.
Q 12In which language did Grant and director Josef von Sternberg argue on the set of Blonde Venus?
German
He played a wealthy playboy opposite Marlene Dietrich in the 1932 film.
Q 13Which 1935 Cukor film, his first with Katharine Hepburn, did Grant consider his career breakthrough despite flopping?
Sylvia Scarlett
He played a raffish Cockney swindler on loan to RKO after Paramount had decided he was expendable.
Q 21Which manic character with two murderous aunts did Cary Grant play in Arsenic and Old Lace?
Mortimer Brewster
Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre co-starred in the 1944 dark comedy.
Q 22Which composer did Cary Grant portray in the 1946 musical biopic Night and Day?
Cole Porter
The troubled shoot needed multiple takes; the next year he made The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer with Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple.
Q 23What was the nickname of John Robie, Grant's retired jewel thief in To Catch a Thief?
The Cat
He called Grace Kelly 'possibly the finest actress I've ever worked with', and the Riviera shoot was one of the happiest of his career.
Q 14What did Cary Grant claim to be, uniquely in Hollywood, after leaving his studio in 1936?
The first freelance actor
His first freelance film bombed, but he then signed joint contracts with RKO and Columbia that let him pick his own stories.
Q 15Which 1937 screwball comedy with Irene Dunne made Cary Grant a top Hollywood star?
The Awful Truth
Director Leo McCarey reportedly disliked him but encouraged him to improvise; The Atlantic later called what followed 'the most spectacular run ever for an actor in American pictures'.
Q 16Which silent comedian did Howard Hawks tell Grant to think of when playing his role in Bringing Up Baby?
Harold Lloyd
The 1938 film with Katharine Hepburn and a leopard lost RKO over $350,000 but earned rave reviews.
Q 17Who plays Cary Grant's ex-wife, whom he tries to stop marrying Ralph Bellamy, in His Girl Friday?
Rosalind Russell
Howard Hawks' 1940 comedy is famous for its overlapping dialogue and Grant's ad-libs.
Q 18For which two films was Cary Grant nominated for the Best Actor Oscar?
Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart
He never won a competitive Oscar; the 1970 honorary award was inscribed 'for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting'.
Q 19How many films did Cary Grant make with Alfred Hitchcock?
Four
Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest; the darker roles in the first two stretched his usual persona.
Q 20Which co-star in Suspicion did Grant find 'temperamental and unprofessional'?
Joan Fontaine
Hitchcock later said he disliked the film's conventional happy ending; it was the first of his four with Grant.
Q 24Which actress played opposite Cary Grant in the 1957 romance An Affair to Remember?
Deborah Kerr
The same year he made The Pride and the Passion in Spain with Sophia Loren, with whom he had an affair.
Q 25What is the profession of Cary Grant's mistaken-identity hero in North by Northwest?
Advertising executive
His mid-grey worsted suit in the film, custom-made on Savile Row, became one of the most famous in cinema.
Q 26Which role did Broccoli and Saltzman first want Cary Grant for, before dropping the idea over his one-film limit?
James Bond in Dr. No
James Mason would only agree to three films, so they went looking for someone who could carry a franchise.
Q 27In which 1963 film did Cary Grant worry he would be seen as a 'cradle snatcher' opposite Audrey Hepburn?
Charade
He called working with her 'wonderful' and knew afterwards that Hollywood's Golden Age was over.
Q 28In Father Goose (1964), Cary Grant swapped his suave persona to play what?
A grizzled beachcomber turned coastwatcher
It broke Charade's opening-week record at Radio City with over $210,000 in ticket sales.
Q 29What was Cary Grant's final film, shot in Tokyo during the 1964 Olympics housing shortage?
Walk, Don't Run
Released in 1966, it co-starred Jim Hutton and Samantha Eggar.
Q 30Why did Cary Grant retire from the screen in 1966?
To raise his newborn daughter Jennifer
He called her his 'best production' and answered any comeback talk with 'fat chance'.