Jack Nicholson Trivia
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50 free Jack Nicholson trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Jack Nicholson trivia quiz follows the New Jersey class clown who found out at 37 that his sister was his mother, through the Roger Corman years and the screenwriting detour to the lucky break of Easy Rider. The film questions cover Five Easy Pieces and the chicken-salad scene, Carnal Knowledge, The Last Detail, Jake Gittes in Chinatown, Randle McMurphy, Antonioni's The Passenger, the improvised 'Here's Johnny!', Terms of Endearment, Prizzi's Honor, the Joker deal worth up to $90 million, Colonel Jessup, Melvin Udall, About Schmidt, The Departed and the quiet retirement after How Do You Know. The rest is the man off screen: the Air National Guard, Hanna-Barbera's job offer, the Napoleon film Kubrick never made and Nicholson never gave up on, Brando next door on 'Bad Boy Drive', the golf-club road-rage incident, six children by five women, the Lakers courtside seat, the art collection, and the fishing spider named after him. He is the most Oscar-nominated male actor in history, and this quiz explains why. 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 Stanley Kubrick and Marlon Brando quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which state was Jack Nicholson born and raised?
New Jersey
New Jersey never left him: he grew up on the Shore, in Neptune City, Manasquan and Spring Lake, and told the state's Hall of Fame in 2010, "You can't get away from New Jersey!"
Q 02In 1974, Time researchers told Nicholson his supposed sister was actually his what?
His mother
His mother, June, was unmarried, so her parents raised him as their own son and never told him; he called the discovery dramatic but not "what I'd call traumatizing".
Q 03The teenage Nicholson's first Hollywood job was as an office boy in which studio's cartoon department?
MGM
MGM's cartoon unit was the home of Tom and Jerry; its directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera are said to have offered him a start as an animator, but he wanted to act.
Q 04Which actor directed Nicholson in both The Crossing Guard and The Pledge?
Sean Penn
Sean Penn cast Nicholson's former partner of many years as his character's ex-wife in The Crossing Guard, and Roger Ebert found an "eerie resonance" in their midnight diner scene.
Q 05Nicholson made his film debut in which 1958 Roger Corman teen drama?
The Cry Baby Killer
The Cry Baby Killer cast him as a teenager who panics after a shooting and takes hostages; its producer Roger Corman kept him busy in B-movies for the next decade.
Q 06Nicholson chopped through The Shining's prop door too fast for Kubrick because he had trained as what?
A firefighter
A firefighter: he had served as one in the California Air National Guard, so the breakaway door fell apart too easily and a real one was fitted for the scene.
Q 07Nicholson co-wrote which 1968 film vehicle for The Monkees?
Head
Head, written with director Bob Rafelson, sank at the box office but later found a cult following; Rafelson soon gave him his star-making lead in Five Easy Pieces.
Q 08For which actor was the Easy Rider role of lawyer George Hanson originally written?
Rip Torn
Rip Torn quarrelled with director Dennis Hopper at a New York restaurant and walked away; his replacement turned the boozy small-town lawyer into a first Oscar nomination.
Q 09Stanley Kubrick chose Nicholson to play which historical figure in an epic that was never filmed?
Napoleon
Napoleon eluded him twice: Kubrick's epic stalled after a change of ownership at its studio, and Nicholson later bought the rights to a book on the emperor's death but never got that film made either.
Q 10What was the name of Nicholson's oil-rig worker in Five Easy Pieces (1970)?
Bobby Dupea
Bobby Dupea is a one-time piano prodigy hiding from his upper-class family on the oil rigs; Karen Black said his famous diner showdown was partly improvised and out of character.
Q 11Nicholson turned down which role in The Godfather, saying an Italian-American actor should play it?
Michael Corleone
Michael Corleone went to the little-known Al Pacino instead; by his biographer's count Nicholson also passed on the leads in The Sting and The Great Gatsby.
Q 12On Carnal Knowledge (1971), Nicholson began a lifelong friendship with which musician co-star?
Art Garfunkel
Art Garfunkel played his college roommate, and the friendship lasted: in 1998 it was Garfunkel who presented him with a best-actor prize from the National Board of Review.
Q 13For which film did Nicholson win Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival?
The Last Detail
Q 21Which famous line in The Shining did Nicholson improvise?
'Here's Johnny!'
'Here's Johnny!' was Ed McMahon's nightly introduction of Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show; Kubrick, long resident in England, did not know the catchphrase and nearly used another take.
Q 22Who wanted more of an "everyman" than Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining, and lost the argument to Kubrick?
Stephen King
Stephen King felt audiences would see Nicholson as unhinged from the first scene and wanted an actor like Jon Voight; still unhappy, he scripted his own television version in 1997.
Q 23Nicholson won his second Oscar playing retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove in which film?
Terms of Endearment
The Last Detail brought him the Cannes prize, but he said that missing the Oscar for it "hurt real bad", adding: "I did it in that movie, that was my best role."
Q 14What is the name of the private detective Nicholson plays in Chinatown (1974)?
Jake Gittes
Jake Gittes was a role he liked enough to revive: sixteen years later he directed himself in a sequel, The Two Jakes.
Q 15Which actress starred opposite Nicholson in both Heartburn and Ironweed?
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep began Heartburn opposite Mandy Patinkin, who was dismissed and replaced by Nicholson after filming had started; a year later the pair played a homeless couple in Ironweed.
Q 16Which director gave himself a cameo as the thug who slits Nicholson's nose in Chinatown?
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski plays the knife man himself, which is why his star spends much of the film behind a bandage; the two had been friends for years before the shoot.
Q 17What is the name of Nicholson's character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?
Randle P. McMurphy
Randle P. McMurphy came his way after Gene Hackman and James Caan had been in the frame; it won him his first Oscar on a night the film swept all five major awards.
Q 18Which future star, raised in the same area as Nicholson, played a patient in Cuckoo's Nest?
Danny DeVito
Danny DeVito had already played the patient Martini on stage; the two stayed close, and DeVito went on to direct him in a 1992 biopic.
Q 19In which 1975 film does Nicholson's reporter take over a dead gunrunner's identity?
The Passenger
The Passenger: the dead man was running arms to rebels in Chad, and his contacts soon come looking for the reporter; Nicholson later acquired the film's rights and kept it off the market for years.
Q 20As a teenage cinema worker, Nicholson watched which Marlon Brando film at every showing?
On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront played twice a night at the cinema where he had a summer job; two decades later he took a role in The Missouri Breaks just to act opposite Brando.
Terms of Endearment only came to him because Burt Reynolds, for whom the part was written, chose to make the racing comedy Stroker Ace instead.
Q 24Which playwright did Nicholson play in Warren Beatty's Reds (1981)?
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill is the film's embittered rival for Louise Bryant; Nicholson, who calls himself Irish, said he saw himself in a fellow writer with family troubles, and won an Oscar nomination.
Q 25Who directed Nicholson in Prizzi's Honor after playing the villain opposite him in Chinatown?
John Huston
John Huston asked him to hide his usual intelligence and play the hit man as simple and dumb, so Nicholson stuffed tissue under his upper lip to thicken his speech.
Q 26Nicholson cut his usual fee in exchange for a share of the takings on which film?
Batman
Batman made the gamble pay: his share of the box office and merchandise for playing the Joker came to well over $50 million, and by one biographer's estimate as much as $90 million.
Q 27What rank does Nicholson's Nathan Jessep hold in A Few Good Men?
Colonel
Colonel Jessep, the Guantanamo Bay base commander, was only ten days' work for Nicholson; director Rob Reiner said his full-out effort in every rehearsal made the other actors raise their game.
Q 28For which film was Nicholson nominated for both a Golden Globe and a Razzie in the same awards season?
Hoffa
Hoffa split opinion: Golden Globe voters shortlisted his Teamsters boss for best dramatic actor, while the Razzies named the same performance among the year's worst.
Q 29In Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! (1996), Nicholson played which two roles?
The President and a casino boss
The President and a casino boss: asked to play President Dale, he joked that he wanted every role in the film, and Burton, who had directed him before, added Las Vegas hustler Art Land.
Q 30What is the name of the obsessive-compulsive novelist Nicholson played in As Good as It Gets?
Melvin Udall
Melvin Udall won him a third Oscar and Helen Hunt won Best Actress opposite him, though he had worried that romancing a much younger co-star was a movie cliché.