Kathy Bates
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50 free Kathy Bates trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Kathy Bates spent two decades as a working stage actress before Hollywood noticed her. When it did, she won an Academy Award at the first attempt, and she has gone on playing unforgettable women ever since: a ship's most outspoken passenger, a football player's smothering mama, a lawyer with a secret in Matlock. This quiz covers her whole career. There are questions on her childhood in Tennessee and her lean early years in New York, on the films that made her name and the directors and co-stars she made them with, on her long run of television roles and the awards they brought, and on the illnesses she has spoken about so openly. It is written for film and television fans of every level. Most questions give you something to reason from, a few will test anyone who knows her work well, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Kathy Bates won the Best Actress Oscar for playing an author's obsessive fan in which 1990 thriller?
Misery
Misery cast Kathy Bates when she was a stage actress mostly unknown to film audiences, and the part of Annie Wilkes won her both the Oscar and a Golden Globe.
Q 02Which real first-class passenger did Kathy Bates play in the 1997 epic Titanic?
Molly Brown
Molly Brown is looked down on by the other first-class women as vulgar new money. The real Margaret Brown urged Lifeboat 6's crew to go back for survivors, and her obituaries called her the Unsinkable Mrs. Brown.
Q 03Kathy Bates played the overprotective Mama Boucher, mother of which comedian's character, in The Waterboy?
Adam Sandler
Adam Sandler plays Bobby Boucher, and Kathy Bates nearly passed on the film: she threw the script in the trash after a few pages because football did not interest her.
Q 04Which tool does Kathy Bates's Annie Wilkes swing to break her captive writer's ankles in a notorious hobbling scene?
A sledgehammer
A sledgehammer replaced the novel's axe, with which Annie cuts off a foot. The director insisted she only break the ankles, and the screenwriter later agreed an amputation would have made audiences hate her.
Q 05Kathy Bates's CBS drama Matlock shares its name with a 1980s legal series that starred which television veteran?
Andy Griffith
Andy Griffith played the title lawyer, Ben Matlock, from 1986. In the Bates series the old show exists as television, and her character borrows the famous surname as an alias.
Q 06Kathy Bates won her second Emmy as slave-torturing socialite Delphine LaLaurie in which Ryan Murphy anthology series?
American Horror Story
American Horror Story cast her in its Coven season as a New Orleans socialite dug up after 180 years buried alive. Bates said creator Ryan Murphy had resurrected her career.
Q 07Kathy Bates plays Evelyn Couch, a timid housewife emboldened by an old woman's Alabama tales, in which 1991 film?
Fried Green Tomatoes
Fried Green Tomatoes pairs her with Jessica Tandy, whose tales of the Whistle Stop Cafe push Evelyn to stand up for herself. The role brought Bates a BAFTA nomination.
Q 08Which screen legend flees a hot tub after Kathy Bates's Roberta makes a pass at him in About Schmidt?
Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson plays Warren Schmidt, whose daughter is marrying Roberta's son. Bates settled with the director exactly what the nude scene would show before she agreed to it.
Q 09Which star played waitress Frankie in the 1991 film Frankie and Johnny, a role Kathy Bates originated Off-Broadway?
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Pfeiffer got the part opposite Al Pacino. Bates, who won an Obie in the play, later said the director passed her over because he did not think she looked like a romantic lead.
Q 10Kathy Bates won her first Emmy for a guest spot as the ghost of a hedonistic jingle writer on which sitcom?
Two and a Half Men
Two and a Half Men brought her on as the late Charlie Harper, returned as a ghost in a woman's body. The win ended a run of nine Emmy nominations without a trophy.
Q 11Annie Wilkes, the role that won Kathy Bates an Oscar, trained in which profession before rescuing her favorite writer?
Nursing
Nursing gave Annie the skills to keep the injured Paul Sheldon helpless in her home. The film's director has said she is loosely based on a real nurse believed to have killed children in her care.
Q 12Which Godfather star played bedridden novelist Paul Sheldon opposite Kathy Bates's Annie Wilkes?
James Caan
James Caan took the part after William Hurt, Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas and a string of other leading men turned down a role that keeps its hero flat on his back.
Q 13Which director of When Harry Met Sally cast the then little-known Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes?
Rob Reiner
Q 21The film Richard Jewell, with Kathy Bates as his mother, follows a guard wrongly accused after a bombing at which event?
The Atlanta Olympics
The Atlanta Olympics of 1996 are where Jewell, a security guard, found a bomb in Centennial Park and raised the alarm, only to be accused of planting it himself.
Q 22Which real writer and art collector did Kathy Bates play in Woody Allen's time-travel comedy Midnight in Paris?
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein reads the hero's unfinished novel and praises his rewrite, in between critiquing a new Picasso painting. Hemingway is the one who takes him to meet her.
Q 23What job does Kathy Bates's outspoken Miss Sue do for Michael Oher in the football drama The Blind Side?
Rob Reiner hired her at the suggestion of screenwriter William Goldman, after Anjelica Huston and Bette Midler had both turned the part down.
Q 14Annie Wilkes and Dolores Claiborne, two of Kathy Bates's best-known film roles, were both created by which novelist?
Stephen King
Stephen King created both women, and the two films came five years apart. Bates has called her Dolores Claiborne the favorite performance she ever gave.
Q 15Kathy Bates's Dolores Claiborne lures her abusive husband onto a rotted well cover during which rare event?
A solar eclipse
A solar eclipse darkens the sky as Joe falls. To film it, the crew took the house apart and rebuilt it on a giant blue-screen stage inside a hockey arena.
Q 16Which actress played Selena, the journalist daughter who doubts Kathy Bates's title character in Dolores Claiborne?
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the New York reporter who returns to her Maine island home when her mother is suspected of murder. Both women earned Saturn Award nominations.
Q 17What does Kathy Bates's character lend the penniless hero in Titanic so he can dine among the wealthy passengers?
An evening suit
An evening suit she had bought for her son lets the steerage artist pass at a first-class dinner. Unlike the other wealthy women aboard, she is friendly to him.
Q 18Kathy Bates rejoined Titanic co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in which 2008 drama about a suburban marriage?
Revolutionary Road
Revolutionary Road cast her as Helen Givings, the realtor who befriends the unhappy Wheelers. It was the three actors' second film together.
Q 19Kathy Bates earned an Oscar nomination as fixer Libby Holden in which 1998 film modeled on a real presidential campaign?
Primary Colors
Primary Colors stars John Travolta as a governor closely resembling Bill Clinton, and came from a novel first published anonymously. Bates's Libby forces a confession at gunpoint.
Q 20Which veteran director guided Kathy Bates to a fourth Oscar nomination as the mother of wrongly accused Richard Jewell?
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood directed and produced the 2019 drama, in which Bobi Jewell pleads at a press conference for the FBI to clear her son. Bates also won the National Board of Review's supporting actress award.
Private tutor
Private tutor Miss Sue is hired by the Tuohy family because he must reach a minimum grade point average before a college will take him.
Q 24Kathy Bates plays grandmother Sylvia in a 2023 film of which author's 1970 novel about 11-year-old Margaret Simon?
Judy Blume
Judy Blume's novel about a girl's talks with God waited more than fifty years for a film. Bates's Sylvia gladly takes her granddaughter to temple when asked.
Q 25Kathy Bates played wealthy matriarch Charlotte Cartwright in The Family That Preys for which writer-director?
Tyler Perry
Tyler Perry wrote, co-produced and directed the 2008 drama, and took a role in it himself. Bates's socialite has to fight her own son for control of the family business.
Q 26Which British monarch did Kathy Bates play in the 2004 Jackie Chan comedy Around the World in 80 Days?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria turns up at the finish to have the scheming Lord Kelvin arrested, once his plots against Phileas Fogg come to light.
Q 27Which cabinet post does Kathy Bates's character hold in the 2008 Keanu Reeves remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still?
Secretary of Defense
Secretary of Defense is the official the alien Klaatu tells why he has come: to save the planet from the damage humans are doing. Bates had only two weeks to film her scenes.
Q 28Kathy Bates played Texas governor Ma Ferguson in The Highwaymen, a film about the hunt for which outlaw pair?
Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde are tracked by two former Texas Rangers, played by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson. Bates's governor is persuaded to hire the lawman Frank Hamer for the job.
Q 29Kathy Bates played activist Dorothy Kenyon in On the Basis of Sex, a biopic of which Supreme Court justice?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is played by Felicity Jones in a film written by the justice's own nephew. Bates's Kenyon reads the young lawyer's brief and talks the ACLU's Mel Wulf into helping.
Q 30In The Miracle Club, Kathy Bates and Maggie Smith play Dublin women who win a pilgrimage to which French town?
Lourdes
Lourdes is the prize in a parish talent show, which the women enter in 1967 as a singing group called the Miracles.