Oscars Trivia
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148 free Oscars trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
41 free Oscars trivia questions with answers. Forty-one questions on the Academy Awards, from the very first ceremony in 1929 to the most recent Best Picture winners. The set covers the records every film buff argues about: the films tied at eleven Oscars, Walt Disney's 22 wins, Katharine Hepburn's four acting awards, Meryl Streep's nomination record, and the youngest and oldest acting winners. It also digs into the famous firsts and the drama: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier and Halle Berry breaking barriers, Parasite becoming the first non-English Best Picture, the George C. Scott and Marlon Brando refusals, and the La La Land and Moonlight envelope mix-up. There are questions on the golden statuette itself, on winners from It Happened One Night to Everything Everywhere All at Once and Oppenheimer, and on the people behind the camera. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the awards, the films and the people involved, and the sentence that establishes it is shown under each explanation.
30 of 148 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The first Academy Awards, a private dinner in May 1929, was held at which Los Angeles venue?
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel's Blossom Room hosted the black-tie dinner on 16 May 1929, with tickets at $5; unlike every ceremony since, it was never broadcast on radio or television.
Q 02Why was there no suspense at the first Oscars in 1929?
Winners already announced
Winners were already announced three months before the 1929 dinner, so the statuettes were handed over in a matter of minutes; from the second ceremony on, nothing was announced in advance.
Q 03Which film won Outstanding Picture, the forerunner of Best Picture, at the very first Academy Awards?
Wings
Wings, a First World War flying epic, won Outstanding Picture while Sunrise took a separate 'Unique and Artistic Picture' prize; a year later the Academy dropped that award and ruled Wings' the top honour.
Q 04What did the Academy start doing in 1941 after the LA Times printed the Oscar winners early in 1940?
Using a sealed envelope
Using a sealed envelope began in 1941: until then the results were handed to newspapers in advance, and in 1940 the Los Angeles Times printed the winners before the ceremony had begun.
Q 05Which accounting firm and its predecessor have certified the Academy Awards votes since 1935?
PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers and its forerunner Price Waterhouse have counted the ballots since 1935; after a partner handed over the wrong card in 2017's Best Picture mix-up, both accountants on duty were taken off the show.
Q 06What do the spokes on the reel of celluloid beneath the Oscar statuette's feet stand for?
The Academy's original branches
The Academy's original branches were actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers, one spoke each; the Academy has since grown to well over a dozen branches, but the reel still has five spokes.
Q 07Which actress told the 1985 Oscars audience 'you like me' as she accepted her second Best Actress award?
Sally Field
Sally Field, winning for Places in the Heart, actually said 'I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!'; the line is usually misquoted as 'You really like me!'
Q 08A wartime metal shortage forced the Academy to make its statuettes out of what for three years?
Painted plaster
Wartime Oscars were painted plaster. Afterwards the Academy invited those winners to trade the plaster figures in for proper gold-plated metal ones.
Q 09A winner wanting to sell an Oscar must first offer it back to the Academy for what sum?
$1
$1 is all the Academy must pay under the agreement winners have signed since the early 1950s, so only older statuettes reach auction: Michael Jackson paid $1.54 million for Gone with the Wind's Best Picture Oscar.
Q 10George C. Scott refused the Best Actor Oscar, calling the ceremony a 'meat parade', for which 1970 film?
Patton
Patton won Scott the award for playing the general, but he stayed away from the 1971 ceremony and refused the statuette, saying the contest between actors was demeaning.
Q 11Marlon Brando refused his 1973 Best Actor award as a protest against what?
Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans
Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans was his target: Brando boycotted the 45th ceremony and sent activist Sacheen Littlefeather on stage to turn the statuette down for him.
Q 12Which film made Kathryn Bigelow the first woman to win Best Director?
The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker won Bigelow the award at the 2010 ceremony, where the nominees she beat included her ex-husband, the director of Avatar; her film took Best Picture from his as well.
Q 13Which film was the first of only three to sweep the Oscars' so-called Big Five categories?
Q 21Which film was the first not in the English language to win Best Picture?
Parasite
Parasite won four Oscars in 2020; weeks earlier its director Bong Joon Ho had told an awards audience that getting over 'the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles' would open up many more great films.
Q 22Who became the first Black woman to win Best Actress, at the 2002 Oscars?
Halle Berry
Halle Berry won for Monster's Ball and tearfully dedicated the award to 'every nameless, faceless woman of colour' who now had a chance; as of 2026 no other Black woman has won it.
Q 23Who was the first African American to win an Academy Award, taking Best Supporting Actress in 1940?
Hattie McDaniel
It Happened One Night
It Happened One Night won all five of its nominations, Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay, for 1934, and nothing matched the sweep for 41 years, until One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Q 14For which 1963 film did Sidney Poitier become the first Black man to win Best Actor?
Lilies of the Field
Lilies of the Field won Poitier the award at the 1964 ceremony for playing a handyman who builds a chapel for refugee nuns; it was 38 years before another Black actor won Best Actor.
Q 15Which George Bernard Shaw play, adapted for the screen in 1938, brought him an Academy Award?
Pygmalion
Pygmalion won Shaw the screenplay award for Gabriel Pascal's 1938 film, an honour he is said to have brushed off as an insult from people who had barely heard of him; he had won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.
Q 16Which two films share the record for the most Oscar wins with 11 each, alongside Ben-Hur?
Titanic and Return of the King
Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King each won 11 Oscars, matching Ben-Hur; The Return of the King won every category it was entered in, without a single acting nomination.
Q 17Who holds the record for the most competitive Academy Awards won by an individual, with 22?
Walt Disney
Walt Disney won 22 competitive Oscars from 59 nominations; for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the Academy added an honorary award made up of one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones.
Q 18Which actress holds the record for the most Academy Awards for acting, with four?
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn won four Best Actress Oscars across 48 years without once turning up to collect; her only appearance at the ceremony, in 1974, was to present an award to a producer friend.
Q 19Who is the youngest person ever to win a competitive Academy Award?
Tatum O'Neal
Tatum O'Neal was ten when she won Best Supporting Actress for Paper Moon, opposite her father Ryan; Shirley Temple had been honoured at six, but with a miniature Juvenile Award outside the competition.
Q 20Anthony Hopkins became the oldest Best Actor winner for which 2020 film about dementia?
The Father
The Father won Hopkins the award at 83, for playing a man losing his grip on reality; he was not at the ceremony, and sent his thanks afterwards in a video from his home country, Wales.
Hattie McDaniel won for playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind, but the hotel hosting the ceremony barred Black guests, so she was seated at a small table by the wall, apart from her co-stars.
Q 24Which film actually won Best Picture in 2017 after La La Land was wrongly announced?
Moonlight
Moonlight won Best Picture at the 89th awards after presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were handed a duplicate of the Best Actress card and read out La La Land.
Q 25Who won Best Actress for Everything Everywhere All at Once at the 2023 Oscars?
Michelle Yeoh
Michelle Yeoh, the first Asian winner of Best Actress, was 60 and told the audience: 'Ladies, don't let anybody tell you you are past your prime'; her film won seven Oscars in all.
Q 26Oppenheimer won seven Oscars in 2024, including Best Director for whom?
Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan had never won an Oscar before Oppenheimer, which took seven of its thirteen nominations; his one earlier directing nomination, for Dunkirk six years before, had lost.
Q 27Heath Ledger won a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing which character?
The Joker
Ledger won Best Supporting Actor for playing the Joker in The Dark Knight at the February 2009 awards, thirteen months after his death in January 2008; his family accepted the statuette.
Q 28Which film composer is the second most Oscar-nominated person ever, with 54 nods as of 2026?
John Williams
John Williams has 54 nominations, more than any other living person, but only five wins: Fiddler on the Roof, Jaws, Star Wars, E.T. and Schindler's List, the last of them three decades ago.
Q 29The Oscar statuette depicts a knight rendered in which artistic style?
Art Deco
The Oscar is an Art Deco knight, a stylised, streamlined figure gripping a crusader's sword and standing on a reel of film, in the geometric style fashionable when it was designed in 1928.
Q 30The first televised Oscars were split between Hollywood and which other city?
New York
New York hosted a second stage with its own hosts in 1953, the first ceremony held in two places at once; Shirley Booth accepted her Best Actress award there, a continent away from the main show.