Denzel Washington Trivia
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80 free Denzel Washington trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Denzel Washington trivia quiz runs the length of a career that The New York Times called the greatest of the 21st century: the Mount Vernon boy who wanted to go to Texas Tech for the uniforms, the Fordham basketball guard who found acting at a summer camp, Dr. Phillip Chandler on St. Elsewhere, and then Cry Freedom, Glory, Malcolm X, Philadelphia, Crimson Tide, The Hurricane, Training Day, Man on Fire, Inside Man, American Gangster, Flight, Fences, The Equalizer, The Tragedy of Macbeth and Gladiator II. The stage work is here too, from his 1988 Broadway debut through Brutus, Troy Maxson, Hickey and Othello, along with the family (Pauletta, John David, Malcolm), the church, the Boys & Girls Clubs, and the awards. Easy questions ask which film won him Best Actor and who played his son in He Got Game; the hard ones want the name of his production company, the play he made his Broadway debut in and the real runaway train behind Unstoppable. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Washington and his films, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
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Q 01Denzel Washington was born on 28 December 1954 in which New York suburb?
Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon. His mother ran beauty salons there, and when his parents divorced she sent the 14-year-old away to a military boarding school in upstate New York.
Q 02What was the vocation of Denzel Washington's father?
Pentecostal minister
Pentecostal minister. The family didn't go to the cinema, so the future film star grew up on little beyond religious epics like King of Kings and The Ten Commandments.
Q 03From which university did Denzel Washington earn a BA in Drama and Journalism in 1977?
Fordham University
Fordham University. He enrolled as a pre-med student, switched to journalism, and only joined the theatre programme after taking time away from college.
Q 04Denzel Washington played college basketball under which coach, later choked by Latrell Sprewell in the NBA?
P. J. Carlesimo
P. J. Carlesimo. He was a young assistant coach when Washington was a freshman guard; Sprewell's 1997 attack on him at a Warriors practice brought the player a 68-game suspension.
Q 05Denzel Washington wanted to attend Texas Tech because its teams shared which nickname with his boyhood club?
Red Raiders
Red Raiders. The teenage wish got the New Yorker following Texas teams, which is how he says he ended up a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan.
Q 06Denzel Washington's screen debut was a 1977 made-for-television docudrama about which sprinter?
Wilma Rudolph
Wilma Rudolph. On the set of Wilma he met a fellow cast member, Pauletta Pearson, and six years later he married her.
Q 07In which 1981 comedy, his first Hollywood film, did Denzel Washington play George Segal's long-lost son?
Carbon Copy
Carbon Copy. His Roger Porter turns up at a wealthy white executive's office claiming to be his son, and the news soon gets the man thrown out of his job and his home.
Q 08Denzel Washington played Dr. Phillip Chandler on which NBC hospital drama from 1982 to 1988?
St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere. The drama was never a ratings hit, yet NBC kept it on for six seasons and it won 13 Emmys.
Q 09The NBC hospital drama in which Denzel Washington played Dr. Phillip Chandler was set in which city?
Boston
Boston. Its finale implied the whole series had been imagined by an autistic boy gazing into a snow globe with the hospital inside.
Q 10Denzel Washington's first Oscar nomination came for playing which South African activist in Cry Freedom (1987)?
Steve Biko
Steve Biko. South Africa's censors passed the film uncut, but once it reached cinemas there in 1988 the police seized the prints.
Q 11Who directed Cry Freedom, the 1987 anti-apartheid drama that earned Denzel Washington his first Oscar nomination?
Richard Attenborough
Richard Attenborough. Unable to film in apartheid South Africa, the Gandhi director shot the story mainly across the border in Zimbabwe.
Q 12In Cry Freedom, which actor played newspaper editor Donald Woods opposite Denzel Washington?
Kevin Kline
Kevin Kline. His banned editor slips out of South Africa disguised as a priest to publish what he knows, just as the real Donald Woods had done.
Q 13Denzel Washington won his first Oscar, as Best Supporting Actor, for which film?
Glory
Glory. His Private Trip, who escaped slavery, slips out of camp to find shoes for his ruined feet and is flogged for desertion in front of the whole regiment.
Q 21What is the name of the production company Denzel Washington founded in 1992?
Mundy Lane Entertainment
Mundy Lane Entertainment. "The company started basically because my manager thought it was a good idea," he said five years on; its first film was Devil in a Blue Dress in 1995.
Q 22Who directed Philadelphia (1993), in which Denzel Washington played lawyer Joe Miller opposite Tom Hanks?
Jonathan Demme
Jonathan Demme. Bill Murray, William Hurt, Nick Nolte and Tim Robbins were all considered for Joe Miller before the part went to Washington.
Q 23The Pelican Brief, in which Denzel Washington played reporter Gray Grantham, was adapted from a novel by which author?
John Grisham
Q 14Denzel Washington played Private Trip, a Civil War soldier in which real Union Army regiment?
54th Massachusetts
54th Massachusetts. The real regiment refused its pay rather than accept less than white soldiers received, and kept refusing until Congress granted equal pay in 1864.
Q 15Which real colonel, played on screen by Matthew Broderick, commands Denzel Washington's Private Trip?
Robert Gould Shaw
Robert Gould Shaw. Confederates buried him in a mass grave with his Black soldiers as an insult, but his father asked that the body be left there, saying a soldier's most fitting grave is the field where he fell.
Q 16Denzel Washington won the Academy Award for Best Actor for which 2001 film?
Training Day
Training Day. It was a rare villain for an actor known for likable heroes; Roger Ebert wrote that by the end his rogue cop is "like a monster from a horror film, unkillable and implacable".
Q 17In the film that won him Best Actor, what is the name of Denzel Washington's corrupt LAPD narcotics detective?
Alonzo Harris
Alonzo Harris. His car's licence plate, ORP 967, is said to stand for Officer Rafael Pérez, born in 1967, the real LAPD anti-gang officer at the centre of the Rampart corruption scandal.
Q 18Denzel Washington's 2001 Best Actor win made him the second Black actor to take the category, after whom?
Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier. He was in the theatre that night: the Academy had handed him an honorary Oscar earlier in the same ceremony, 38 years after his own win for Lilies of the Field.
Q 19Which actor did Denzel Washington call his "hero", saying "He was who I wanted to be"?
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones. "I wasn't going to be as big as him. I wanted to sound like him," Washington said after Jones died in 2024, adding that seeing Jones on stage is what started his own college theatre career.
Q 20Which South African leader appears as a Soweto schoolteacher at the end of Denzel Washington's Malcolm X?
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela. Filmed soon after his release from 27 years in prison, he addresses a classroom whose pupils declare one by one, "I am Malcolm X."
John Grisham. He was in the audience when the Clintons hosted a private White House screening of the film a week before it opened.
Q 24In a 1995 Gene Hackman thriller, Denzel Washington played executive officer Ron Hunter aboard which nuclear submarine?
USS Alabama
USS Alabama. In Crimson Tide, when a damaged radio cuts off a follow-up order mid-message, Hunter refuses to back his captain's nuclear launch and has him removed from command.
Q 25Which role did Denzel Washington play in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993)?
Don Pedro
Don Pedro. As the Prince of Aragon he does young Claudio's courting for him and wins him Hero, while Keanu Reeves sulks as his scheming half-brother Don John.
Q 26In Courage Under Fire, Denzel Washington's colonel investigates whether Meg Ryan's Captain Walden deserves which decoration?
Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor. In the film Walden would be the first woman to earn it in combat; in fact Civil War surgeon Mary Edwards Walker received it, had it stripped in 1917 and got it back in 1977.
Q 27What is the name of the angel Denzel Washington plays in his 1996 Christmas comedy with Whitney Houston?
Dudley
Dudley. Sent in answer to a struggling pastor's prayer, the angel ends up quietly falling in love with the pastor's wife.
Q 28Denzel Washington's 1996 Christmas comedy with Whitney Houston was a remake of which Cary Grant film?
The Bishop's Wife
The Bishop's Wife. Grant's angel answers a bishop who is fretting over money for a grand new cathedral; the remake swaps him for an inner-city pastor fighting to keep his church going.
Q 29In He Got Game (1998), which NBA player played Jesus Shuttlesworth, the son of Denzel Washington's character?
Ray Allen
Ray Allen. Then a young Milwaukee Bucks guard, he plays the nation's top prospect, whose jailed father is let out for a week to steer him to the governor's old college.
Q 30In Mo' Better Blues, Denzel Washington played jazz musician Bleek Gilliam, who plays which instrument?
Trumpet
Trumpet. The film opens with young Bleek kept indoors practising while his friends play outside, and his career ends when he is beaten across the mouth with his own instrument.