Famous Matthews
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50 free Famous Matthews trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Matthew has been a favourite boys' name for centuries, helped along by the apostle who shares it. The people who have carried it since make an unusually varied crowd: Hollywood leading men, sitcom favourites, naval officers, polar explorers, quarterbacks, poets and inventors. The name has even been pinned on a hurricane. This quiz covers the lot. Many questions name a famous Matthew and ask what he did, from film sets and concert stages to battlefields and uncharted coastlines. Others cover people better known as Matt who were born Matthew, fictional Matthews from novels, comics and television, and the musicians and athletes who carry Matthews as a surname. It suits a themed pub quiz round, a birthday quiz for the Matthew in your life, or anyone who enjoys general knowledge with a twist. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you guess wrong.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Matthew Perry, who played Chandler Bing on Friends, was a top-ranked junior player in which sport in Canada?
Tennis
Tennis took up as much as ten hours of his day as a boy in Ottawa. His prospects faded at 15, when he moved to Los Angeles to live with his father and found the competition much tougher.
Q 02Matthew McConaughey won the Best Actor Oscar playing Ron Woodroof, a rodeo cowboy diagnosed with AIDS, in which film?
Dallas Buyers Club
Dallas Buyers Club tells how the real Woodroof smuggled unapproved drugs into Texas to treat his symptoms. Co-star Jared Leto won Best Supporting Actor on the same night.
Q 03Matthew Broderick, who skipped school as Ferris Bueller in 1986, voiced which grown-up Disney lion eight years later?
Simba
Simba got his adult voice from Broderick, who recorded with another actor only once in three years on The Lion King. He first assumed the film was an American version of Kimba.
Q 04Matt Damon, born Matthew Paige Damon, won a screenwriting Oscar for Good Will Hunting with which childhood friend?
Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck was his schoolmate in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Damon joked that their drama teacher gave his friend the biggest roles. Rumors that the pair had not written the script lingered for years.
Q 05Matthew the Apostle, traditional author of the New Testament's opening Gospel, held which job before following Jesus?
Tax collector
Tax collector Matthew was sitting at his customs post in Capernaum when Jesus called him. The Gospels of Mark and Luke tell the same story about a man they call Levi.
Q 06US Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry used a show of naval force in the 1850s to open which country to trade?
Japan
Japan signed the Convention of Kanagawa with him in 1854, ending its long isolation. The Japanese called his smoke-belching steam warships the Black Ships.
Q 07Captain Matthew Webb became a Victorian celebrity in 1875 as the first person to swim across which stretch of water?
English Channel
English Channel waters took him nearly 22 hours to cross, greased with porpoise oil and stung by a jellyfish on the way. He died eight years later attempting the rapids below Niagara Falls.
Q 08Matt Groening, born Matthew Abram Groening, followed The Simpsons with which animated series set in the 31st century?
Futurama
Futurama follows Fry, a pizza delivery boy frozen for 1,000 years. Fox had pressed Groening for a new series, and he brought in Simpsons writer David X. Cohen to help develop it.
Q 09Dave Matthews, whose band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991, was born in which country?
South Africa
South Africa is where he was born, in Johannesburg, and he left after school to avoid military conscription. A Quaker and a pacifist, he ended up tending bar in Charlottesville.
Q 10Leeds-born Matthew Lewis made his name in the Harry Potter film series playing which Hogwarts classmate of Harry's?
Neville Longbottom
Neville Longbottom went to Lewis, a fan of the books, after an open audition at a Leeds hotel and a screen test for director Chris Columbus.
Q 11Matt LeBlanc, born Matthew Steven LeBlanc, spent three years after his sitcom fame hosting which British motoring show?
Top Gear
Top Gear hired him in 2016 alongside Chris Evans, who stepped down after a single series. Before he landed the part of Joey in Friends, LeBlanc was reportedly down to his last eleven dollars.
Q 12Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer whose full name is Matthew Michael Murdock, protects Hell's Kitchen as which Marvel hero?
Daredevil
Daredevil was blinded in a childhood chemical accident that sharpened his other senses. Co-creator Bill Everett drew on his daughter, who was legally blind and had unusually keen hearing.
Q 13Solicitor Matthew Crawley, a distant middle-class cousin, suddenly becomes heir to an earl's estate in which drama?
Q 21Matthew Macfadyen, Mr. Darcy in the 2005 film Pride & Prejudice, later played Tom Wambsgans in which HBO family drama?
Succession
Succession brought him two Primetime Emmys for the supporting role. He began a relationship with Keeley Hawes when the two co-starred in the spy drama Spooks.
Q 22Matthew Modine, who turned down the lead in Top Gun, played Private Joker in which Stanley Kubrick war film?
Full Metal Jacket
Full Metal Jacket made him its central character, a Marine in the Vietnam War. Modine rejected Top Gun because he felt its pro-military stance went against his politics.
Q 23Matthew Lillard, Stu Macher in Scream, played which Mystery Inc. member in the live-action Scooby-Doo films?
Shaggy
Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey made him heir after the two men ahead of him in line died aboard the Titanic. Actor Dan Stevens decided to leave, so the character was killed off in the 2012 Christmas special.
Q 14Matt Stone, born Matthew Richard Stone, co-created which animated satire about four boys in a Colorado mountain town?
South Park
South Park is a real grassland basin in the Rocky Mountains, southwest of Denver. Stone and Trey Parker went on to co-create the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon.
Q 15A back injury ended Matt Smith's youth football career before he was cast as the eleventh lead of which BBC series?
Doctor Who
Doctor Who cast him at 26, three years younger than Peter Davison had been in 1981. Smith, born Matthew Robert Smith, had captained Leicester City's youth team.
Q 16Matthew Fox played Jack Shephard, a surgeon who leads plane-crash survivors on a mysterious island, in which TV drama?
Lost
Lost was filmed mainly on Oahu, Hawaii, which helped make it one of the most expensive series on television. Fox had earlier played the eldest of five orphaned siblings in Party of Five.
Q 17Matthew Morrison played Will Schuester, a Spanish teacher who revives an Ohio school's show choir, in which series?
Glee
Glee followed his club, New Directions, at the fictional William McKinley High School in Lima. Morrison came from Broadway, where he was the original Link Larkin in Hairspray.
Q 18Royal Navy navigator Matthew Flinders led the first circumnavigation of which landmass, then known as New Holland?
Australia
Australia owes its name partly to Flinders, who preferred it to Terra Australis and applied it to the whole continent. He had earlier helped confirm that Tasmania is an island.
Q 19Matthew Henson, hired as Robert Peary's valet in 1887, joined the 1909 expedition that claimed to reach which place?
North Pole
North Pole credit went to Peary, but Henson later said he was the first of the party to arrive. He mastered the Inuit language, and the Inuit called him Mahri-Pahluk.
Q 20Quarterback Matthew Stafford, first overall pick of the 2009 NFL draft, spent his first twelve seasons with which team?
Detroit Lions
Detroit Lions teams reached the playoffs three times with him at quarterback. Traded to the Los Angeles Rams in 2021, he led them to victory in Super Bowl LVI.
Shaggy stayed with him long after the two films. When Casey Kasem retired from the part in 2009, Lillard became the character's official animated voice.
Q 24Matthew Gray Gubler, a former fashion model, played the genius profiler Dr. Spencer Reid in which CBS crime drama?
Criminal Minds
Criminal Minds also let him direct several episodes. Gubler was scouted as a model while studying film at NYU and later interned for director Wes Anderson.
Q 25Matt Bellamy, born Matthew James Bellamy, formed which Grammy-winning rock band with schoolmates in Teignmouth, Devon?
Muse
Muse has Bellamy as its singer, guitarist, pianist and lyricist. The trio won Grammys for Best Rock Album with The Resistance and Drones.
Q 26Matthew Weiner wrote for The Sopranos before creating which drama about a 1960s New York advertising agency?
Mad Men
Mad Men began as a spec script that Weiner wrote after working on several sitcoms. It went on to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series four years in a row.
Q 27Matthew Vaughn, producer of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, directed which spy film series that began in 2014?
Kingsman
Kingsman started as a comic book series that Vaughn co-created. Until 2002 he believed his father was the American actor Robert Vaughn.
Q 28The St Matthew Passion, a sacred oratorio written in 1727 for double choir and double orchestra, is by which composer?
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach set the Gospel story to a German libretto by Picander. It is one of only two of his Passion settings to survive complete, alongside the St John Passion.
Q 29Hurricane Matthew, a Category 5 storm in 2016, caused its worst loss of life in which Caribbean country?
Haiti
Haiti took the first landfall, on its Tiburon Peninsula, and suffered its worst disaster since the 2010 earthquake. The storm went on to strike Cuba later the same day.
Q 30Auston Matthews, the first overall pick of the 2016 NHL draft by Toronto, grew up in which warm-weather US state?
Arizona
Arizona had its own NHL team, the Phoenix Coyotes, whose games he attended from the age of two. He asked to take up the sport shortly after his fifth birthday.