Ingrid Bergman Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
69 free Ingrid Bergman trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Ingrid Bergman trivia quiz spans five decades of one of cinema's most admired careers. The easy questions cover the essentials: where she was born, the film with Humphrey Bogart everyone asks her about, the three roles that won Academy Awards and the director she made three thrillers with. From there it moves into her Swedish beginnings, David O. Selznick's worries about her eyebrows, and the wartime hits that made her America's most popular actress. The harder end is for classic-film devotees: the play that won her a Tony, the Hemingway novel whose author insisted on her, the Senate speech that branded her a powerful influence for evil, the Rossellini films made in exile, the small part she chose over a bigger one in Murder on the Orient Express, the Emmy she won posthumously and the key from Notorious she handed back to Hitchcock. Her marriages, her famous children and the tributes since her death are covered too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the actress and her films before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Casablanca, Alfred Hitchcock and Golden Age of Hollywood quizzes next.
30 of 69 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Ingrid Bergman born in 1915?
Stockholm
Stockholm is also where she won a place at the Royal Dramatic Theatre's acting school, only to leave after a single year because a film studio had hired her.
Q 02After whom was Ingrid Bergman named?
A Swedish princess
A Swedish princess, five-year-old Ingrid, gave Bergman her name. The princess grew up to marry Denmark's crown prince and was Queen of Denmark from 1947 to 1972.
Q 03Which character did Bergman play opposite Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca?
Ilsa Lund
Ilsa Lund's great romance was pure acting: off the set the two stars hardly spoke, and Bergman later said she had kissed Bogart but never knew him.
Q 04Which actress won more acting Oscars than Bergman's three?
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn won four, all for Best Actress, yet her only appearance at the ceremony came in 1974, when she turned up to present an award to someone else.
Q 05Which director made three films with Bergman: Spellbound, Notorious and Under Capricorn?
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock got round the censors' limit on long screen kisses in Notorious by having his two stars break off every few seconds, stretching one embrace to some two and a half minutes.
Q 06Bergman's American debut was the 1939 English-language remake of which of her own Swedish films?
Intermezzo
Intermezzo was meant to be a one-off: she agreed to a single Hollywood film and went home to Sweden afterwards, until its success persuaded her to come back.
Q 07Which producer brought Bergman to Hollywood in 1939?
David O. Selznick
David O. Selznick planned a glamour makeover and a new name for her; she threatened to take the next train home, and he ended up selling her as Hollywood's first 'natural' actress.
Q 08Which of Bergman's features did her first Hollywood producer complain were too thick?
Her eyebrows
Her eyebrows went unplucked: she also refused to cap her teeth or change her name, and told him that if he insisted she would take the next train back home.
Q 09What did Bergman joke she had 'perhaps' been as a girl, thanks to her doting father?
Scandinavia's most photographed child
Scandinavia's most photographed child had a father who ran a camera shop: he recorded her birthdays and shot her constantly, often in costume, and she loved dressing up and acting for his lens.
Q 10Which actor starred opposite Bergman in both For Whom the Bell Tolls and Saratoga Trunk?
Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper's second film with her sat on the shelf: Saratoga Trunk was finished in 1943 and shown to troops overseas, but American cinemas did not get it until the war was over.
Q 11In which Swedish film, remade by MGM with Joan Crawford, did Bergman lead a blackmail gang?
A Woman's Face
A Woman's Face was a part she fought for: she agreed to make another film she disliked only if she could first play this bitter, burn-scarred criminal, with a brace inside her cheek to distort it.
Q 12In which 1941 film did Bergman beg to play the barmaid Ivy instead of the hero's fiancée?
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had her down for the doctor's sweet fiancée. She pleaded for the barmaid instead because, as she later said, she could not go on playing good and beautiful girls all her life.
Q 13What nickname, pairing a soap brand with a film star, was Bergman given in her early Hollywood years?
Q 21For which Maxwell Anderson play did Bergman win the Tony Award for Best Actress?
Joan of Lorraine
Joan of Lorraine was such a hit that Bergman formed her own company with a producer and a director to film the saint's life, released in 1948 as Joan of Arc.
Q 22What did Ingrid Bergman publicly protest in Washington in 1946, while starring in a play there?
Racial segregation
Racial segregation was the rule at Lisner Auditorium, where her play was running, and she said so to the newspapers. The play's cast signed a protest against the whites-only policy.
Q 23In her famous fan letter to director Roberto Rossellini, Bergman said the only Italian she knew was what?
Ti amo
The Palmolive Garbo
The Palmolive Garbo was a label for a Swedish newcomer who looked freshly scrubbed: she refused Hollywood's layers of make-up and went before the cameras almost bare-faced.
Q 14Which novelist insisted that Bergman, and no one else, should play the heroine Maria in the film of his book?
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway got his wish only at the second attempt: the studio first cast Vera Zorina as Maria, then replaced her with Bergman two weeks into shooting.
Q 15For which 1944 film did Bergman win her first Academy Award?
Gaslight
Gaslight and the play behind it gave English a word: a husband persuades his wife she is imagining the dimming lamps, which is why making someone doubt their own sanity is now called gaslighting.
Q 16Who directed Bergman's first Oscar-winning role, in the 1944 film that introduced Angela Lansbury?
George Cukor
George Cukor cast the film's maid on a writer's word: one of its screenwriters recommended the 17-year-old daughter of an émigré actress, and Angela Lansbury made her screen debut in the part.
Q 17Bergman played a nun opposite Bing Crosby in which film, the biggest box office hit of 1945?
The Bells of St. Mary's
The Bells of St. Mary's became the biggest hit in RKO's history. Bergman had her own reason to love it: under a nun's habit, she wrote, only her face showed, so she could eat ice cream forever.
Q 18Which artist was hired to design the dream sequence in Spellbound?
Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali was the director's choice: he wanted the dream shown with hard-edged clarity rather than the usual blurred haze. The producer later cut much of what was shot.
Q 19In Notorious, Bergman's Alicia Huberman infiltrates a group of German emigres hiding in which city?
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro is where the film's famous kiss unfolds, on a balcony: to get round the censors' limit on long kisses, the two stars break off every few seconds for some two and a half minutes.
Q 20Which prop from Notorious did Bergman hand to its director at his 1979 AFI tribute?
The wine cellar key
The wine cellar key had been kept by her co-star when filming ended; he later gave it to her for luck, and she passed it on to the director with the same wish.
Ti amo means 'I love you'. She offered herself as a Swedish actress ready to come and make a film with him; the film was Stromboli, and during the shoot the two fell in love.
Q 24On the floor of which body was Bergman denounced in 1950 as "a powerful influence for evil"?
The United States Senate
The United States Senate heard Colorado's Edwin C. Johnson attack her in March 1950. In 1972 another senator, Charles Percy, entered an apology for it into the Congressional Record.
Q 25Which TV host flew to Europe in 1956 to film Bergman for his show, only for the appearance never to air?
Ed Sullivan
Ed Sullivan filmed her on the set of her comeback picture, but she never appeared on his programme. His Sunday-night rival Steve Allen had her on instead, and defended the booking when critical mail arrived.
Q 26Which tycoon owned RKO when it backed Stromboli?
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes had taken control of the studio in 1948. After another Hollywood producer turned the film down, Bergman rang Hughes herself and won his backing.
Q 27In Under Capricorn (1949), Bergman plays an alcoholic aristocrat living in which British colonial territory in 1831?
Australia
Australia is the setting, and the title nods to the Tropic of Capricorn, which crosses it. Filmed in unbroken takes of up to ten minutes, it was one of her last failures before she left Hollywood.
Q 28Which 1956 film marked Bergman's return to Hollywood studio work and won her a second Oscar?
Anastasia
Anastasia was a gamble: 20th Century-Fox cast her after seven years away from American screens, when she was still seen as a box-office risk. It was shot in Europe, not Hollywood.
Q 29Who played the scheming General Bounine opposite Bergman in her 1956 comeback film?
Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner shared the triumph: at the 1957 Oscars he was named Best Actor for The King and I on the same night that Bergman won Best Actress for this film.
Q 30Which former co-star accepted Bergman's second Best Actress Oscar on her behalf in 1957?
Cary Grant
Cary Grant collected the statuette in her absence. Two years later she walked on to the Oscar stage herself as a presenter, to applause said to be louder than for any winner that night.