Elizabeth Taylor Trivia
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59 free Elizabeth Taylor trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Elizabeth Taylor trivia quiz starts with a London girl with double eyelashes whose family fled to California in 1939, and follows her through National Velvet at 12, the MGM 'factory', A Place in the Sun, Giant and the death of James Dean, Maggie the Cat, the Eddie Fisher scandal, the BUtterfield 8 Oscar she hated, the $1 million Cleopatra deal, the tracheotomy, the Vatican's 'erotic vagrancy', Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the eleven films with Richard Burton. The second half is about the woman the world could not stop watching: seven husbands and eight weddings, the Krupp and Taylor-Burton diamonds, the conversion to Judaism, the Betty Ford Center, the wedding at Neverland, White Diamonds and the fragrance fortune, and the AIDS activism that raised over $270 million and put her before Congress. Then the legacy: the Christie's auction, the damehood, the Presidential Citizens Medal, and the Taylor Swift song. 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 Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn quizzes next.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Elizabeth Taylor born in 1932?
London
London. Her American father dealt in art there until 1939, when her mother took the children to California months before the war; the English accent she kept helped win her first big film roles.
Q 02Which US ambassador urged Taylor's father to bring the family home to America in 1939?
Joseph P. Kennedy
Joseph P. Kennedy. The father of a future president had his office urge Americans to get their families out, and her mother sailed with the two children in spring 1939, months before the war began.
Q 03Taylor's famous eyes were rimmed by dark double eyelashes caused by what?
A genetic mutation
A genetic mutation. It gave her a second row of lashes so dark that a cameraman on one of her first films took them for make-up and asked for it to be taken off.
Q 04Which studio dropped Taylor after a year and one film before MGM signed her?
Universal
Universal. It gave her one small part, in There's One Born Every Minute, and let her go within a year; MGM then cast her beside a collie in Lassie Come Home and made her a star.
Q 05In her first starring role, at 12, Taylor plays a girl who wants to ride as a jockey in which race?
The Grand National
The Grand National. The studio first judged her too small for the part and gave it to her only months later; decades on she still called it the most exciting film she ever made.
Q 06Which single word did Taylor record as Maggie Simpson's first, in a 1992 episode of The Simpsons?
Daddy
Daddy. Maggie says it only after Homer has put her to bed and shut the door, so the father who had longed to hear the word from his children never does.
Q 07Taylor's 1946 children's book Nibbles and Me was about her pet what?
Chipmunk
Chipmunk. She wrote the story in a school copybook and drew the pictures herself, and a New York publisher brought it out when she was 14.
Q 08Which March sister did Taylor play in MGM's 1949 film of Little Women?
Amy
Amy. In the novel Amy is the youngest sister, but with the much younger Margaret O'Brien cast as Beth, the film swapped their places and made Beth the baby of the family.
Q 09MGM used Taylor's 1950 wedding to hotel heir Nicky Hilton to promote which of her films?
Father of the Bride
Father of the Bride. She played Spencer Tracy's daughter planning her big day, and the comedy opened within weeks of her own ceremony; the real marriage was over in less than a year.
Q 10A Place in the Sun (1951), which Taylor called her first real acting job, was based on which novel?
An American Tragedy
An American Tragedy. Theodore Dreiser built the 1925 novel on a real case from 1906, when Chester Gillette took his girlfriend out on an Adirondack lake and was later executed for her murder.
Q 11Which heroine did Taylor play in MGM's medieval epic Ivanhoe (1952)?
Rebecca
Rebecca. The shoot changed her life off screen too: during it she began the romance with the British actor Michael Wilding, twenty years her senior, that led to her second marriage.
Q 12Taylor was loaned to Paramount for Elephant Walk (1954) after which original star fell ill?
Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh. She had to withdraw soon after shooting began in Ceylon, and the finished film still shows her, not Taylor, in some of the long shots.
Q 13Which of Taylor's co-stars died in a car crash shortly after finishing his scenes in Giant (1956)?
James Dean
James Dean. He was killed before the film was finished, and one mumbled speech had to be re-recorded after his death by his friend Nick Adams, imitating his voice.
Q 21Taylor's affair with Richard Burton began in 1962 while Cleopatra was shooting in which Italian city?
Rome
Rome. The rumours were confirmed that June, when a paparazzo photographed the two, both still married to other people, together on a yacht off the island of Ischia.
Q 22During the Cleopatra affair, a Vatican weekly accused Taylor of what?
'Erotic vagrancy'
'Erotic vagrancy'. The phrase came in April 1962, when she and Burton were each still married to someone else; two years later they were married to each other.
Q 23Taylor won her second Oscar as a blowsy, middle-aged faculty wife in which film?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Q 14Which film brought Taylor her first Academy Award nomination?
Raintree County
MGM hoped the Civil War drama would be another Gone with the Wind; she found her mentally disturbed Southern belle fascinating but disliked the film.
Q 15How did Taylor's third husband, the producer Mike Todd, die in 1958?
In a plane crash
In a plane crash. His private plane, named the Lucky Liz after her, went down in a storm over New Mexico; she had wanted to fly with him but stayed home ill.
Q 16Taylor's affair with Eddie Fisher broke up his marriage to which actress, her close friend?
Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds. The two later made peace, and in 2001 they sent up their own images together in These Old Broads, a TV film written by Reynolds's daughter, Carrie Fisher.
Q 17Taylor won her first Oscar for playing a call girl in which film, one she openly hated?
BUtterfield 8
BUtterfield 8. She made it only to finish her MGM contract, and believed the award was a sympathy vote: she had nearly died of pneumonia weeks before the ceremony.
Q 18For Cleopatra, Taylor became the first actress to be paid how much for a single film?
$1 million
$1 million. She named the figure half in jest and the studio said yes; as the shoot overran, overtime more than doubled it.
Q 19During the Cleopatra shoot in 1961, Taylor's near-fatal pneumonia required which procedure?
A tracheotomy
One news agency wrongly reported her death; Fox scrapped the footage and restarted in Rome with a new director and a new Mark Antony.
Q 20Cleopatra's runaway costs came close to bankrupting which Hollywood studio?
20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox. The epic was among the biggest box-office earners of 1963, yet it had cost so much and taken so long to make that the studio behind it came close to ruin.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She put on weight and a greying wig to play a woman far older than herself and won, while Burton, nominated as her on-screen husband, lost.
Q 24In a 1966 Oxford staging of Doctor Faustus with Burton, Taylor played which non-speaking character?
Helen of Troy
Helen of Troy. The two gave a week of performances to raise money for Oxford's student theatre, and her whole part was a brief, wordless appearance.
Q 25Which director made the 1967 film of The Taming of the Shrew with Taylor as Katharina?
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli. He had first pictured Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni as the leads; Taylor and Burton came aboard as co-producers as well as stars.
Q 26Which old friend did Elizabeth Taylor want for Reflections in a Golden Eye before he died and Brando replaced him?
Montgomery Clift
Montgomery Clift. She made his casting a condition of her own and offered her salary as his insurance, but he died of a heart attack shortly before shooting was due to begin.
Q 27Taylor's diner waitress in Hammersmith Is Out (1972) won her a Silver Bear at which city's film festival?
Berlin
Berlin. The festival hands out bears because the animal stands on the city's coat of arms; hers was for best actress, in a Faust spoof directed by Peter Ustinov.
Q 28Taylor's sixth husband, John Warner, held what office?
US Senator from Virginia
US Senator from Virginia. She campaigned hard to get him elected in 1978, then found the life that followed so dull that she called herself 'the loneliest person in the world'.
Q 29Taylor made her Broadway debut in 1981 as Regina Giddens in which Lillian Hellman play?
The Little Foxes
The Little Foxes. Bored as a political wife, she turned to the stage, and took the production on to the West End the following year.
Q 30Taylor became the first celebrity to openly admit herself to which clinic, in December 1983?
The Betty Ford Center
The Betty Ford Center. On a return stay in 1988 she met a fellow patient, a construction worker named Larry Fortensky, and three years later he became her last husband.