Charlie Chaplin Trivia
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49 free Charlie Chaplin trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Charlie Chaplin trivia quiz starts with a boy in the Lambeth workhouse whose mother was committed to Cane Hill, and follows him through the Eight Lancashire Lads, Sherlock Holmes on the West End, Fred Karno's troupe with Stan Laurel, and the $150-a-week Keystone contract that changed cinema. Then the Tramp: the costume built as 'a contradiction', Kid Auto Races at Venice, the $670,000 Mutual deal at 26, the founding of United Artists, Jackie Coogan in The Kid, the shoe dinner in The Gold Rush, the silent gamble of City Lights, the gibberish song in Modern Times, and the Hitler double-act of The Great Dictator. The last stretch covers the fall and the return: the Joan Barry trials and J. Edgar Hoover, the four wives and Oona O'Neill, the day the US revoked his re-entry permit, the Swiss estate at Corsier-sur-Vevey, the 12-minute Oscar ovation, the knighthood in a wheelchair, the only competitive Oscar for Limelight's score, and the two men who dug up his coffin. There are also questions on 'Smile', the assassination plot in Japan and George Orwell's list. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Silent Film and Classic Hollywood quizzes next.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which London district did Chaplin spend his early years with his mother and brother Sydney?
Kennington
Kennington. Outside a pub at Kennington Cross the boy heard two street musicians play 'The Honeysuckle and the Bee', and he later called it the moment he first discovered music.
Q 02Where was seven-year-old Chaplin sent in 1896 when his mother fell ill and had no means to support her sons?
A workhouse
A workhouse: he and his brother were soon moved on to a school for pauper children, where treatment for ringworm meant a shaved head painted with iodine. He was back in a workhouse two years later.
Q 03In a famous scene from The Great Dictator, Chaplin's tyrant performs a dreamy solo ballet with what?
A balloon globe
A balloon globe: the dictator dances with the world to the prelude from Wagner's Lohengrin, and just when he believes he has it in his grasp, it bursts.
Q 04With which clog-dancing troupe did the young Chaplin tour English music halls in 1899 and 1900?
The Eight Lancashire Lads
The Eight Lancashire Lads gave Chaplin his professional debut. He quickly won favour as a dancer, but the boy wanted a comedy act instead and soon moved on to acting.
Q 05Which role did the teenage Chaplin play in Sherlock Holmes opposite William Gillette?
Billy the pageboy
Billy the pageboy: he first toured in the part opposite H. A. Saintsbury, and played it so well that he was called to London to do it beside Gillette, the original Holmes.
Q 06Which music-hall impresario hired Chaplin in 1908 despite finding him pale and puny?
Fred Karno
Fred Karno took him on at the urging of Chaplin's brother Sydney, already one of his stars, and his wordless sketch troupe, billed as the Speechless Comedians, trained Chaplin in the mime his films relied on.
Q 07Which future comedy star toured North America in the same music-hall troupe as Chaplin?
Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel, then billed as Stan Jefferson, was Chaplin's understudy in the troupe, and its American tours gave both men a taste for the country where they would make their films.
Q 08Chaplin was touring America with a music-hall troupe when which studio lured him away for $150 a week?
Keystone
Keystone, whose knockabout comedies had not much impressed him. His overnight success on screen had rival studios bidding for him within a year, and he left for $1,250 a week.
Q 09Which 1914 film was Chaplin's screen debut, casting him as a top-hatted swindler before he created the Tramp?
Making a Living
Making a Living. Chaplin said the finished film broke his heart because the cutter had butchered his gags, yet a trade paper's reviewer hailed its star as 'a comedian of the first water'.
Q 10In which February 1914 short did audiences first see the Tramp?
Kid Auto Races at Venice
Kid Auto Races at Venice, improvised in front of real spectators at a children's car race. He had first put on the costume days earlier for Mabel's Strange Predicament, but this film reached cinemas first.
Q 11What did Chaplin add to the Tramp costume to give the character age without hiding his expression?
A small moustache
A small moustache: he was undecided whether to look old or young, then remembered that his new boss had expected a much older man. The rest was chosen as a contradiction, from baggy trousers to a tight coat.
Q 12In Modern Times, the Tramp is the guinea pig for a time-saving factory machine designed to do what?
Feed workers as they work
Feed workers as they work, so the factory need not pause for lunch. The pace of the conveyor belt soon gives the Tramp a nervous breakdown, and he ends up swallowed by the factory's machinery.
Q 13Which studio boss let Chaplin direct in 1914 only after he promised to pay $1,500 if the film flopped?
Q 21In July 1925, days after The Gold Rush premiered, Chaplin appeared on the cover of which two-year-old magazine?
Time
Time put him on its cover as The Gold Rush opened. In one of the film's most famous scenes, the Tramp spears two bread rolls on forks and makes them dance like a pair of feet.
Q 22Whose 1927 divorce petition against Chaplin, leaked to the press, led to calls for his films to be banned?
Lita Grey
Lita Grey, the teenager first cast as his leading lady in The Gold Rush, whom he felt forced to marry during the shoot. The scandal of the divorce halted work on his next film for months.
Q 23For which film did Chaplin receive a special trophy at the very first Academy Awards?
The Circus
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett had been close to firing him for defying a director, until orders poured in for more Chaplin pictures. The gamble paid off, and Chaplin directed most of his films from then on.
Q 14Which actress, discovered for Chaplin's Essanay comedies in 1915, was his leading lady for the next eight years?
Edna Purviance
Edna Purviance was a San Francisco secretary when a Chaplin scout spotted her in a café. She went on to appear in more than 30 of his films.
Q 15Which studio made Chaplin one of the world's highest-paid people in 1916 with a contract worth $670,000 a year?
Mutual
Mutual, which paid $10,000 a week plus a $150,000 signing bonus and gave him his own studio. The twelve two-reel comedies he made there are widely counted among his finest work.
Q 16Which director joined Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks in founding United Artists in 1919?
D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith. Until then producers had employed the stars and paid them salaries; the four founders became their own employers, financing their own pictures and keeping the profits.
Q 17Why did Chaplin marry Mildred Harris in 1918?
A pregnancy scare
A pregnancy scare: she believed she was expecting, which proved a false alarm. Their son, born the following year, lived only three days, and within weeks Chaplin had begun The Kid.
Q 18Which child actor, cast at the age of four, played the title role opposite Chaplin in The Kid?
Jackie Coogan
Jackie Coogan, whom Chaplin spotted in his father's vaudeville act. His mother and stepfather later squandered his film fortune, which led California to pass the child-actor law still known as the Coogan Act.
Q 19In A Woman of Paris (1923), his first film as an independent producer, Chaplin unusually did what?
Barely appeared in it
Barely appeared in it: he walked on for a few seconds as an unbilled railway porter, and warned audiences in advance not to expect him. The press was ecstatic, but his public stayed away.
Q 20The Gold Rush was inspired by a photograph of the Klondike and by the story of which ill-fated group?
The Donner Party
The Donner Party, pioneers snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in 1846 who ate hides and finally their dead. Chaplin turned that horror into comedy: his starving Tramp cooks his boot and eats it like a gourmet.
The Circus, which won him a special award for 'versatility and genius' in writing, acting, directing and producing it. Yet he tied the film so closely to his divorce that his memoirs never mention it.
Q 24In City Lights (1931), the Tramp falls for a flower girl who is what?
Blind
Blind: she takes the Tramp for a rich man while he scrapes together the money for her cure. When her sight is restored she finally sees who helped her, a scene James Agee called 'the highest moment in movies'.
Q 25Japanese officers who killed their prime minister in 1932 also plotted to kill the visiting Chaplin, hoping to provoke what?
War with America
War with America. Chaplin, in Japan as the prime minister's guest, escaped because he was watching sumo wrestling with the premier's son when the killers struck.
Q 26In Modern Times (1936), the Tramp's voice is heard for the only time on film when he performs what?
A gibberish song
A gibberish song: hired as a singing waiter, the Tramp loses the cuffs he wrote the words on and improvises in mock-Italian nonsense, so his one 'speech' could be understood in every country.
Q 27Chaplin and Adolf Hitler were born how far apart?
Four days
Four days: Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 and Hitler later the same week. The uncanny likeness between the Tramp and the dictator gave Chaplin the idea for The Great Dictator.
Q 28What was the name of Chaplin's Hitler parody in The Great Dictator?
Adenoid Hynkel
Adenoid Hynkel. Chaplin also played the dictator's double, a Jewish barber, his answer to Nazi propaganda that had long labelled Chaplin himself a Jew, which he was not.
Q 29Chaplin read The Great Dictator's closing speech on the radio for which president's inauguration?
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt's, in January 1941. In the film's finale Chaplin drops the comedy, looks into the camera and pleads against war and fascism, an ending that divided opinion.
Q 30Under which law was Chaplin tried and acquitted in 1944 over his affair with actress Joan Barry?
The Mann Act
The Mann Act, a 1910 law against taking women across state lines for sex: he had paid Barry's train fare to New York. Some saw his politics behind the charge, and his American image never fully recovered.