Indian Celebrities Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
49 free Indian Celebrities trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
India's celebrities are famous on a scale few countries match: a film star's birthday draws crowds outside his house, a cricketer's debut is remembered to the day, and a playback singer can stay in demand for half a century. Behind the fame sit the details fans trade like currency: the birth name on the school register, the first job before stardom, the television serial nobody expected to matter. These 49 questions cover the whole celebrity map: Hindi and southern cinema, the cricket team, classical and film music, technology and industry, Olympic sport and the pageant winners who turned a crown into a screen career. Each asks for a person and hands you a second clue to reason from, and every answer comes with a one-line explanation that adds something new. Play it on your phone, or print it for a family quiz night, a classroom round or a Diwali party.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor, born in 1942, is often said to have nearly been named Inquilaab, after the slogan 'Inquilab Zindabad'?
Amitabh Bachchan
Amitabh Bachchan got his name from the poet Sumitranandan Pant, a friend of his father, the poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan; the actor has since said on his quiz show that he was never actually called Inquilaab.
Q 02Which Tamil superstar, born Shivaji Rao Gaikwad, was a Bangalore bus conductor before acting?
Rajinikanth
Rajinikanth was still a conductor with the Bangalore Transport Service when his friend and co-worker Raj Bahadur pushed him to join the Madras Film Institute and helped pay his way.
Q 03Which future India captain worked as a travelling ticket examiner at Kharagpur from 2001 to 2003?
MS Dhoni
MS Dhoni checked tickets for South Eastern Railway until 2003, made his India debut the next year, and by 2007 was captain of the side that won the first T20 World Cup.
Q 04Which actress, later the star of Main Hoon Na, was the first Indian crowned Miss Universe, in 1994?
Sushmita Sen
Sushmita Sen had beaten Aishwarya Rai to the Miss India title months earlier; Rai, the runner-up, was sent to Miss World instead and won that too.
Q 05Which batter made his Test debut against Pakistan in Karachi in November 1989, aged just 16?
Sachin Tendulkar
Sachin Tendulkar was struck on the nose by a Waqar Younis bouncer in the final Test of that series, waved away medical help and batted on as it bled.
Q 06Which Jamshedpur-born actress was the first South Asian to headline a US network drama, in Quantico?
Priyanka Chopra
Priyanka Chopra, already a Bollywood star, signed a talent deal with ABC before being cast as FBI recruit Alex Parrish, the role that won her two People's Choice Awards.
Q 07Which action star, born Rajiv Hari Om Bhatia, worked as a chef and waiter in Bangkok before acting?
Akshay Kumar
Akshay Kumar spent five years in Bangkok learning Thai boxing, then taught martial arts in Bombay, where a student's father steered him into modelling.
Q 08Which actress made her Hollywood debut opposite Vin Diesel in xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017)?
Deepika Padukone
Deepika Padukone, daughter of badminton champion Prakash Padukone, played the sport at national level as a teenager before giving it up to model.
Q 09Which Madurai-born engineer became chief executive of Google in 2015 and of its parent Alphabet in 2019?
Sundar Pichai
Sundar Pichai, born Pichai Sundararajan, joined Google in 2004 and rose by leading the team behind its Chrome browser.
Q 10Which British actress, born in Hong Kong, married Vicky Kaushal at a fort in Rajasthan in December 2021?
Katrina Kaif
Katrina Kaif, born Katrina Turcotte, spoke so little Hindi at first that voice artists dubbed her lines in most of her early films.
Q 11Which singer, named Hema at birth, was renamed after Latika, a character in one of her father's plays?
Lata Mangeshkar
Lata Mangeshkar sang the patriotic 'Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo' in the presence of Jawaharlal Nehru in January 1963, in the shadow of the Sino-Indian War.
Q 12Which actress, daughter of Tamil star Gemini Ganesan, won a National Award for playing the courtesan Umrao Jaan?
Rekha
Rekha, born Bhanurekha Ganesan, left school in her early teens to act; arriving in Bombay with no Hindi and mocked for her looks, she remade herself into one of Hindi cinema's great stars.
Q 13Which Hindi film legend was born Muhammad Yusuf Khan in Peshawar's Qissa Khawani Bazaar?
Dilip Kumar
Q 21Which tennis player's bronze at Atlanta 1996 was India's first individual Olympic medal in 44 years?
Leander Paes
Leander Paes beat Brazil's Fernando Meligeni for the medal despite a badly injured wrist, and through Paris 2024 remained the only Indian with an Olympic tennis medal.
Q 22Which Infosys co-founder, who began with ₹10,000 lent by his wife in 1981, is Rishi Sunak's father-in-law?
Narayana Murthy
Narayana Murthy founded Infosys in Pune with six fellow engineers on his wife Sudha Murty's savings, and ran it as chief executive for the next 21 years.
Q 23Which billionaire left Stanford at 21 to run his late father's vegetable-oil company?
Azim Premji
Dilip Kumar's childhood house in Peshawar was declared a national heritage monument by Pakistan's government in 2014.
Q 14Which industrialist led his family group from 1991 to 2012, buying Tetley, Corus and Jaguar Land Rover?
Ratan Tata
Ratan Tata retired in 2012 but came back four years later, replacing his own successor Cyrus Mistry as interim chairman until February 2017.
Q 15Which billionaire's family home is Antilia, a 27-storey private tower in Mumbai?
Mukesh Ambani
Mukesh Ambani's Antilia, named after a mythical island, sat unlived-in for months after its 2010 housewarming; the family moved in only in September 2011, amid press talk that its vastu, a tradition akin to feng shui, was wrong.
Q 16Which composer was born Dileep Kumar in Madras?
A. R. Rahman
A. R. Rahman took his new name when he and his family converted to Islam in his early twenties; fans know him as the 'Mozart of Madras' and 'Isai Puyal', the Musical Storm.
Q 17Which singer was unofficially banned by All India Radio and Doordarshan from May 1976 during the Emergency?
Kishore Kumar
Kishore Kumar was blacklisted by broadcasting minister Vidya Charan Shukla after refusing to sing at a Congress party rally, and stayed off state airwaves until the Emergency ended.
Q 18Which actress made her screen debut as a small child in the 1967 Tamil film Kandhan Karunai?
Sridevi
Sridevi, cited as Indian cinema's first female superstar, went straight from child roles to heroine without, by her own account, ever experiencing school or college life.
Q 19Which actor's charity Being Human sells T-shirts and other products to help the underprivileged?
Salman Khan
Salman Khan also launched SKBH Productions in 2011, with profits from its films donated to the Being Human organisation.
Q 20Which shooter's two Paris 2024 bronzes made her the first Indian since independence to win two medals at one Olympics?
Manu Bhaker
Manu Bhaker won 10 m air pistol bronze and a mixed-team bronze with Sarabjot Singh, three years after a pistol malfunction wrecked her Tokyo Games.
Azim Premji renamed the cooking-oil maker Wipro and, after IBM left India, steered it into computers, turning a shortening and soap firm into a software giant.
Q 24Which actor won both Filmfare Best Debut and Best Actor for Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai (2000), directed by his father?
Hrithik Roshan
Hrithik Roshan had stammered since the age of six and needed daily speech therapy; before his debut he worked as an assistant director on four of his father's films.
Q 25Which actor's television debut was hosting Satyamev Jayate, a talk show on social issues, in May 2012?
Aamir Khan
Aamir Khan's first episode, on female foeticide, led Rajasthan's chief minister to meet him and agree to a fast-track court for the cases it exposed.
Q 26Which superstar made his television debut as cadet Abhimanyu Rai in the 1989 army serial Fauji?
Shah Rukh Khan
Shah Rukh Khan had first been cast in Lekh Tandon's serial Dil Dariya, but production delays let Fauji reach screens first.
Q 27Which Student of the Year (2012) debutante starred opposite Gal Gadot in Netflix's Heart of Stone?
Alia Bhatt
Alia Bhatt had first appeared on screen as a child in the 1999 thriller Sangharsh, thirteen years before her first leading role.
Q 28Which actress, daughter of Randhir and Babita, won Filmfare Best Actress as Geet in Jab We Met (2007)?
Kareena Kapoor
Kareena Kapoor was first cast in another 2000 blockbuster but walked out days into shooting, making her debut later that year in Refugee instead.
Q 29Which actor, raised in Tonk and Jaipur, played the adult Pi Patel in Ang Lee's Life of Pi?
Irrfan Khan
Irrfan Khan was picked as a young cricketer for the CK Nayudu Trophy but could not afford to go; he turned to acting and joined the National School of Drama in 1984.
Q 30Which Tamil actor-politician won a President's gold medal at age six for Kalathur Kannamma (1960)?
Kamal Haasan
Kamal Haasan got the part after a doctor friend of his mother took him along on a house call to producer A. V. Meiyappan, whose son recommended the boy.