Gregory Peck Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
49 free Gregory Peck trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Gregory Peck trivia for classic-film lovers, To Kill a Mockingbird readers and anyone who thinks Atticus Finch is the greatest hero the movies ever produced (the American Film Institute agrees). This quiz follows Peck from La Jolla and the Berkeley rowing crew through Sanford Meisner's classes and Broadway to a run of Oscar nominations in the 1940s: The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling, Gentleman's Agreement and Twelve O'Clock High, plus Hitchcock's Spellbound and the 'Lust in the Dust' western Duel in the Sun. It covers the peak years and the late surprises: Roman Holiday and the billing he insisted on for Audrey Hepburn, Captain Ahab, The Big Country, The Guns of Navarone, both versions of Cape Fear, the Oscar for Atticus Finch, The Omen, Josef Mengele in The Boys from Brazil and MacArthur. It also looks at the man off screen: the La Jolla Playhouse he co-founded, his stand against HUAC, a place on Nixon's enemies list, the Medal of Freedom from LBJ and the eulogy read by Brock Peters. Questions range from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. If you enjoy this quiz, try our classic Hollywood, Audrey Hepburn and To Kill a Mockingbird quizzes next.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Californian community was Gregory Peck born in 1916?
La Jolla
La Jolla did not hold him long: after his parents divorced he was passed between them and his grandmother, and at ten they sent him to a military academy in Los Angeles.
Q 02What was Gregory Peck's real first name, which he dropped before heading to New York?
Eldred
Eldred was a name his mother picked out of a phone book, he said, and he never liked it. Nobody knew him in New York, so he simply switched to his middle name.
Q 03What sport did Peck take up at the University of California, Berkeley?
Rowing
Rowing stayed with him for life: in 1996 he pledged $25,000 to the Cal men's crew in honour of his old coach, Ky Ebright.
Q 04Which dance legend's movement class gave Gregory Peck the back injury that kept him out of WWII?
Martha Graham
Martha Graham taught movement at his New York drama school, and he hurt his back in her class. His studio blamed a college sports injury instead because, he said, a dance class 'wasn't macho enough'.
Q 05Under which legendary acting teacher did Peck study at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse?
Sanford Meisner
Sanford Meisner taught him there on a scholarship, at a time when Peck was so broke that he sometimes slept in Central Park.
Q 06Peck earned his first Oscar nomination playing a missionary priest in China in which 1944 film?
The Keys of the Kingdom
The Keys of the Kingdom was only his second film. With so many leading men away at war, the newcomer's stock soared, and the nomination made him a star.
Q 07In which 1945 Hitchcock film did Peck play an amnesiac who may be a murderer?
Spellbound
Spellbound is the Hitchcock thriller whose famous dream sequence was designed by the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.
Q 08In which 1946 Western, nicknamed 'Lust in the Dust', was Peck cast as a cruel cowboy?
Duel in the Sun
Duel in the Sun first had John Wayne lined up as the wicked Lewt, but producer David O. Selznick wanted a sex story and felt Wayne stood for the exact opposite.
Q 09In The Yearling (1946), Peck plays a Florida father whose son insists on raising what?
A fawn
A fawn, which the boy names Flag. MGM had first begun shooting in 1941 with Spencer Tracy as the father, shelved the project, and restarted it years later with Peck.
Q 10In which 1947 Elia Kazan film does Gregory Peck play a journalist pretending to be Jewish?
Gentleman's Agreement
Gentleman's Agreement was a film some Jewish studio executives warned producer Darryl Zanuck not to make. He went ahead anyway, and it won Best Picture.
Q 11What did Peck co-found in his Californian hometown in 1947 with Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer?
A summer theatre
A summer theatre: the three film stars put on its plays in a local high school auditorium, and Peck acted in several of them himself.
Q 12In Twelve O'Clock High (1949), Peck plays the new commander of what?
A hard-luck US bomber group
A hard-luck US bomber group is what his General Frank Savage must whip back into shape, and the strain of sending young crews out to die finally breaks the general himself.
Q 13Fox executives blamed the weak box office of The Gunfighter (1950) on what?
Peck's moustache
Q 21Which actress starred opposite Peck in Designing Woman (1957) while her husband was gravely ill?
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall inherited a part planned for Grace Kelly, who had left Hollywood to become a princess. Her husband, Humphrey Bogart, was dying of cancer during the shoot.
Q 22Peck co-produced The Big Country (1958) with which director, then fell out with him?
William Wyler
William Wyler refused him a retake of one scene, so Peck walked off the set. The two had been good friends, and the rift between them lasted about three years.
Q 23In The Guns of Navarone (1961), what is the specialty of Gregory Peck's Captain Mallory?
Mountain climbing
Peck's moustache, grown for period realism, horrified the studio. Darryl Zanuck said he would pay thousands of his own money to get it off, fearing it would put off the star's young female fans.
Q 14Which classic Western role did Peck turn down soon after making The Gunfighter?
Will Kane in High Noon
Will Kane in High Noon struck him as too close to the gunfighter he had just played, so the part went to Gary Cooper, who won the Best Actor Oscar for it.
Q 15Peck played which fictional Napoleonic-era Royal Navy captain in a 1951 Raoul Walsh film?
Horatio Hornblower
Horatio Hornblower was bought by Warner Bros. as a vehicle for swashbuckler Errol Flynn, but by the time the cameras rolled Flynn was out and the thoughtful Peck had the ship.
Q 16For which Roman Holiday co-star did Peck insist on equal billing above the title?
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn was a newcomer, but Peck told his agent she was going to win the Oscar in her first big picture and that he would look a fool if her name were not up there with his. She won.
Q 17Which star turned down the reporter's role in Roman Holiday before it went to Peck?
Cary Grant
Cary Grant said no first. By most accounts the reporter looked like a supporting part beside the princess, and Peck hesitated for the very same reason.
Q 18Which blacklisted screenwriter wrote Roman Holiday but went uncredited for decades?
Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, had Ian McLellan Hunter put his name on the script, collect the studio's pay and quietly pass it on to him.
Q 19The Million Pound Note (1954), with Peck as a penniless American handed a giant banknote, adapts whose story?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain's tale has two rich brothers hand a stranded American a million-pound note and bet on whether he can live like a king without ever cashing it.
Q 20Who directed Peck as Captain Ahab in the 1956 film of Moby Dick?
John Huston
John Huston had dreamed of casting his own father, Walter Huston, as Ahab, but Walter died in 1950. Peck took the part and later said the director himself should have played it.
Mountain climbing is why he is chosen: the fortress sits above a sheer sea cliff, and Mallory, once the world's greatest climber, has to lead the team up it after a shipwreck.
Q 24Robert Mitchum turned down Max Cady in Cape Fear (1962) until Peck's production sent him flowers and what else?
A case of bourbon
A case of bourbon arrived with a plea to take the part. By his own account Mitchum rang back: 'OK, I've drunk the bourbon, I'm drunk, I'll do it.'
Q 25Peck, Mitchum and Balsam all reappeared in different roles in the 1991 Cape Fear remake directed by whom?
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese turned the casting inside out: Peck, the upright lawyer of the 1962 film, came back in a cameo as a sleazy Southern lawyer.
Q 26For which role did Peck finally win the Academy Award for Best Actor?
Atticus Finch
Atticus Finch was modelled on Harper Lee's own father, and she gave Peck her late father's pocket watch. He had it with him on the night he won the Oscar.
Q 27In 2003 the American Film Institute ranked Peck's Mockingbird lawyer number one on which list?
Greatest movie heroes
Greatest movie heroes: the small-town lawyer beat Indiana Jones and James Bond to the top spot, and the list came out only days before Peck died.
Q 28Which actor made his big-screen debut as the reclusive Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Robert Duvall
Robert Duvall got the part on the word of screenwriter Horton Foote, who had been struck by him in one of his own plays at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse.
Q 29Brock Peters, who read the eulogy at Peck's 2003 funeral, played which To Kill a Mockingbird character?
Tom Robinson
Tom Robinson, the innocent man on trial. In his eulogy Peters quoted Harper Lee's verdict that the film had given Peck the chance to play himself.
Q 30In The Omen (1976), Peck's Robert Thorn is made US ambassador and moves his family to which city?
London
London is where the horrors start, at his son's fifth birthday party. Charlton Heston had turned the part down, and the shocker became Peck's last big box-office hit.