Laurence Olivier Trivia
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50 free Laurence Olivier trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Laurence Olivier trivia quiz covers the six-decade career of the clergyman's son from Dorking who became, by common consent, the greatest actor of the twentieth century. It runs from drama school with Peggy Ashcroft and a break in Noël Coward's Private Lives, through the record-breaking 1935 Romeo and Juliet with John Gielgud, Hamlet at Elsinore, and the Old Vic seasons that made his Richard III and Oedipus legendary, to the founding of Britain's National Theatre and his last Shylock and Lear. The films are all here: Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Maxim de Winter in Hitchcock's Rebecca, Nelson in That Hamilton Woman, the wartime Henry V, the Oscar-winning Hamlet, Crassus in Spartacus, Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Sleuth with Michael Caine, the Nazi dentist of Marathon Man and Mengele in The Boys from Brazil. There are also questions on his three marriages, to Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh and Joan Plowright, his knighthood, peerage and Poets' Corner memorial, and the awards that carry his name. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Olivier, his films and his co-stars, and each explanation adds one further detail. Suited to film buffs, theatre lovers and anyone who has ever shouted 'Is it safe?'
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Greek god did Olivier play in the 1981 fantasy film Clash of the Titans?
Zeus
Zeus was one of many late screen cameos Olivier took for the pay cheque: illness had ended his stage career and he had a young family to provide for.
Q 02Who decided that the young Olivier should become an actor?
His clergyman father
His clergyman father ran a strict household and seemed the least likely ally, yet it was he who told Laurence to make the stage his career.
Q 03Which future Dame, Olivier's fellow pupil at the Central School, played Juliet to his Romeo in 1935?
Peggy Ashcroft
Peggy Ashcroft trained beside him under Elsie Fogerty, whose stress on elegant diction appealed to neither of them; Edith Evans was the Nurse in that 1935 production.
Q 04Olivier's first important West End success came in 1930 as Victor Prynne in which play?
Private Lives
Private Lives opened London's new Phoenix Theatre with its author and Gertrude Lawrence in the leads; Olivier's Victor is the stuffy new husband Amanda deserts on their honeymoon.
Q 05In the famous 1935 Romeo and Juliet, Olivier and John Gielgud did what during the run?
Exchanged their two leading parts
They exchanged their two leading parts, Romeo and Mercutio. First-night critics rated Olivier's verse-speaking well below Gielgud's, which infuriated him.
Q 06In June 1937 the Old Vic took Olivier's Hamlet abroad to perform in which town?
Elsinore, Denmark
Elsinore, Denmark, is home to Kronborg Castle, the play's setting. Olivier's 1937 visit, with Vivien Leigh as Ophelia, opened almost two decades of star Hamlets performing there.
Q 07Which Emily Brontë character did Olivier play in his 1939 Hollywood breakthrough?
Heathcliff
Heathcliff taught him to respect the screen: Olivier had looked down on film acting, he admitted, until director William Wyler took him in hand.
Q 08Olivier played the brooding widower Maxim de Winter in which 1940 Hitchcock film?
Rebecca
Rebecca was Hitchcock's first American film. Olivier pushed for Vivien Leigh as his young bride, but producer David O. Selznick judged her wrong for the part and cast Joan Fontaine.
Q 09Which naval hero did Olivier play opposite Vivien Leigh in the 1941 wartime film That Hamilton Woman?
Horatio Nelson
Horatio Nelson's stand against Napoleon was meant to mirror Britain's against Hitler: Alexander Korda shot it in America as propaganda while the US was still neutral.
Q 10Which Jane Austen hero did Olivier play opposite Greer Garson in a 1940 MGM film?
Mr Darcy
Mr Darcy should have had Vivien Leigh as his Elizabeth Bennet: she wanted the part, but her producer David O. Selznick refused to release her and Garson played it.
Q 11Which composer wrote the score for Olivier's Henry V?
William Walton
William Walton scored all the Shakespeare films Olivier directed, and when a studio threw out his 1969 Battle of Britain score, an outraged Olivier got one sequence put back.
Q 12Olivier's 1948 Hamlet was the first British film to win which Academy Award?
Best Picture
Best Picture had never before gone to a film made outside America. Eileen Herlie, who played Hamlet's mother, was more than a decade younger than Olivier.
Q 13Which pair of characters did Olivier cut entirely from his 1948 film of Hamlet?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Q 21Which new festival theatre did Olivier lead as its first director, staging Uncle Vanya in its opening season?
Chichester
Chichester's first season in 1962 began with two neglected 17th-century plays that were only politely received; Uncle Vanya, with Olivier and Michael Redgrave, was the huge success.
Q 22Which Italian director cast Olivier as Nicodemus in the 1977 television epic Jesus of Nazareth?
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli had already used him unseen nine years earlier: Olivier spoke the prologue and epilogue of the director's 1968 Romeo and Juliet without any screen credit.
Q 23Olivier's last stage appearance in a Shakespeare play, at the National in 1970, was as which character?
Shylock
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern went, along with Fortinbras, as Olivier stripped out the play's political intrigue to save time and keep the focus on Hamlet's own family.
Q 14Which honour did Olivier receive in the 1947 Birthday Honours?
A knighthood
A knighthood came six months after his co-director at the Old Vic was dubbed, to Olivier's open envy.
Q 15In a famous 1940s double bill, Olivier played Mr Puff in Sheridan's The Critic straight after which Greek tragic king?
Oedipus
Oedipus gave way in a single evening to Sheridan's farcical Mr Puff: a leap from horror to laughter still cited as proof of Olivier's chameleon range.
Q 16In the 1938 Old Vic Othello, Olivier played Iago to whose Othello?
Ralph Richardson
Ralph Richardson would not play along with director Tyrone Guthrie's theory that Iago secretly desires Othello, so audiences missed the point of Olivier's performance.
Q 17Which Roman did Olivier play in Kubrick's Spartacus (1960)?
Marcus Licinius Crassus
Marcus Licinius Crassus lost his voice in one scene: when it was restored in 1991, after Olivier's death, Anthony Hopkins imitated him on the soundtrack at Joan Plowright's suggestion.
Q 18Which 'angry young man' playwright wrote the seedy music-hall comic Archie Rice at Olivier's request?
John Osborne
John Osborne had finished only the first act when Olivier asked to play Archie; joining the radical young Royal Court gave the great classical star a new charge of energy.
Q 19Which American star did Olivier direct and act opposite in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe's lateness and clashes with her director made the shoot so fraught that it became a film itself: My Week with Marilyn (2011), with Kenneth Branagh as Olivier.
Q 20Which Lawrence of Arabia actor played Hamlet in the National Theatre's opening production under Olivier in 1963?
Peter O'Toole
Peter O'Toole, fresh from his film triumph, was directed by Olivier himself, while the grand new company ran its offices from a row of huts near the Old Vic.
Shylock was Jonathan Miller's production; Olivier, famous for his false noses, wanted one for the part, and his director talked him into taking it off for a plainer look.
Q 24Which critic did Olivier recruit as the National Theatre's literary adviser, only for the board to veto his staging of Soldiers?
Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Tynan wanted Rolf Hochhuth's play, which accused Churchill of complicity in a Polish leader's death; the board vetoed it and it opened in the West End instead.
Q 25In Sleuth (1972) Olivier's crime novelist Andrew Wyke plays cat and mouse with which co-star?
Michael Caine
Michael Caine and Olivier were both Oscar-nominated for the two-hander; in the 2007 remake Caine switched sides and played Olivier's part, Andrew Wyke, opposite Jude Law.
Q 26What is the name of the Nazi war criminal Olivier plays in Marathon Man (1976)?
Christian Szell
Christian Szell, the fugitive camp dentist who drills for answers while asking 'Is it safe?', won Olivier a Golden Globe and ranks 34th on the American Film Institute's list of screen villains.
Q 27Who plays the graduate student and distance runner tortured by Olivier's character in Marathon Man?
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman, in a much-retold story, stayed up for days to look wrecked, and Olivier asked why he didn't just try acting; Hoffman says he had really been out partying and Olivier was joking.
Q 28In The Boys from Brazil (1978), Olivier's Nazi hunter pursues which real fugitive war criminal, played by Gregory Peck?
Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele put Olivier on the other side: two years after playing a fugitive Nazi he was the ageing hunter, a part loosely based on Simon Wiesenthal that brought an Oscar nomination.
Q 29Which character did Olivier play in the 1981 television serial Brideshead Revisited, winning an Emmy?
Lord Marchmain
Lord Marchmain left his wife and his Church for Venice, then came home to die; Olivier's deathbed scene ends with the old sceptic making the sign of the cross.
Q 30Olivier's final Shakespearean role, for Granada Television in 1983, was which king?
Lear
He had already played the part on stage decades before at the Old Vic.