Paul Newman
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50 free Paul Newman trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Paul Newman was a film star for more than fifty years, and a restless one. He played hustlers, outlaws, convicts and con men, collected honours on both sides of the Atlantic, and still found time to drive racing cars at a serious level and to build a food company with a friend. This quiz covers the whole story: the early breaks, the famous roles in The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, the people he worked with, his years on the track and the good causes he backed. It is pitched for film fans of every level. Most questions give you something to reason from, a few will test anyone who knows the films well, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Paul Newman said his greatest accomplishment was being named on which US president's list of political enemies?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon's list had Newman at number nineteen for backing an anti-war candidate in 1968 and opposing the Vietnam War. The actor treated his place on it as a badge of honour.
Q 02In Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman's prisoner wins a bet by eating fifty of which food in an hour?
Hard-boiled eggs
Hard-boiled eggs make the film's best-known scene, and the feat turns Luke into a hero to his fellow inmates. The chain-gang drama brought Newman a Best Actor nomination.
Q 03Paul Newman won his only competitive Oscar in The Color of Money for reprising which pool-playing character?
Fast Eddie Felson
Fast Eddie Felson first appeared in The Hustler in 1961, a role that brought Newman an Oscar nomination. He won 25 years later for playing the same man, now older and running a younger player.
Q 04Which homemade product, first given to friends as gifts, launched Paul Newman's food company Newman's Own in 1982?
Salad dressing
Salad dressing was something Newman and a writer friend mixed themselves. It went down so well that each man put up $20,000 to sell it in shops, and sauces and snacks followed.
Q 05Which character did racing enthusiast Paul Newman voice in the 2006 Pixar film Cars, his last major movie?
Doc Hudson
Doc Hudson is a retired race car, a neat fit for an actor who spent decades racing for real. It was Newman's only role in an animated film.
Q 06Which actor played the Sundance Kid opposite Paul Newman's Butch Cassidy in the 1969 western about two outlaws?
Robert Redford
Robert Redford took the part after bigger names passed on it, and the pairing clicked so well that the two reunited four years later for a hit caper film.
Q 07Which actress, an Oscar winner herself, was married to Paul Newman for 50 years and made 16 films with him?
Joanne Woodward
Joanne Woodward met Newman in 1953, when both were working on the same Broadway play, and married him in 1958. He went on to direct her in several films.
Q 08Which star was originally cast in Somebody Up There Likes Me, the role that became Paul Newman's breakthrough?
James Dean
James Dean was due to play the lead but died before filming began. Newman, who had once screen-tested alongside him for East of Eden, took over the part and became a star.
Q 09Paul Newman performed his own tricks on which vehicle for a playful scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
A bicycle
A bicycle was meant to be ridden by a stuntman, but the director disliked that footage, so Newman did the tricks himself. He also said the film's musical interlude was partly his idea.
Q 10Paul Newman, often described as classically handsome, was especially famous for which piercing facial feature?
Blue eyes
Blue eyes were central to the magnetism that brought Newman film offers soon after his Broadway debut. One leading critic counted them among the reasons his prison drama worked.
Q 11Which young star played Vincent, the cocky pool prodigy mentored by Paul Newman's character in The Color of Money?
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise performed most of his own pool shots for the part, though one especially tricky shot was played for him by a professional. Newman took the Oscar for the film.
Q 12Which director made The Color of Money, the sequel that finally brought Paul Newman a Best Actor Oscar?
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese took the job after Newman phoned him in 1984 to ask whether he would direct a follow-up to The Hustler. He shot the whole film in 49 days.
Q 13In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Paul Newman's outlaw flees a posse to which South American country?
Bolivia
Q 21In which branch of the US military did Paul Newman serve in the Pacific during World War II as a radioman-gunner?
The Navy
The Navy put Newman in torpedo bombers as a radioman and turret gunner. He missed a deadly kamikaze attack on the carrier Bunker Hill only because his pilot was grounded with an earache.
Q 22What does Newman's Own, the food company Paul Newman co-founded in 1982, do with all of its after-tax profits?
Donates them to charity
Newman's Own donates them to charity, and the total has passed hundreds of millions of dollars. Newman left the company to a foundation so that the giving would outlive him.
Q 23Which comedian played pool champion Minnesota Fats opposite Paul Newman in the 1961 drama The Hustler?
Bolivia is where the outlaws and schoolteacher Etta Place run, with Butch picturing it as a robber's paradise. The film ends there, with the two men cornered by soldiers.
Q 14What did Paul Newman found in 1988, naming it after the Hole in the Wall Gang of his Butch Cassidy film?
A camp for sick children
A camp for sick children, it offers seriously ill youngsters summer sessions free of charge. It grew into a worldwide network of similar sites.
Q 15In the 1974 disaster film The Towering Inferno, what is the profession of Paul Newman's character, Doug Roberts?
Architect
Architect Doug Roberts designed the skyscraper that catches fire on the night of its dedication, so he knows what has gone wrong. Newman insisted on doing his own stunts.
Q 16Which star shared top billing with Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno, thanks to diagonally arranged credits?
Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen's name sat lower left and Newman's upper right, so each man appeared to come first depending on how the credits were read. Both had demanded the top spot.
Q 17Paul Newman's final live-action film role was a mob boss opposite Tom Hanks in which 2002 crime drama?
Road to Perdition
Road to Perdition brought Newman his last Oscar nomination, this time as a supporting actor. He had been the film-makers' unanimous first choice to play the Irish crime lord.
Q 18Which actress played Maggie opposite Paul Newman in the 1958 film of the stage hit Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor took the role of Maggie in a film that became a box-office smash. It brought Newman the first of his many Oscar nominations.
Q 19Which director made the 1966 Cold War spy thriller Torn Curtain with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews?
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock both directed and produced the film, in which Newman's scientist pretends to defect to East Germany. Reviews were lukewarm by his standards, but it still made money.
Q 20Paul Newman, whose father ran a sporting goods store, grew up in Shaker Heights, a suburb of which Ohio city?
Cleveland
Cleveland gave Newman his first real stage: at the age of ten he acted at the city's Play House in a production of Saint George and the Dragon.
Jackie Gleason
Jackie Gleason made every one of his own shots, and they were filmed in wide angle so that viewers could see the actor and the shot in the same frame.
Q 24Which ragtime composer's music, including The Entertainer, was revived by Paul Newman's 1973 caper film The Sting?
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin's rags were adapted for the film by Marvin Hamlisch, producing a chart-topping soundtrack and a fresh wave of interest in the composer.
Q 25In The Sting, Paul Newman's con man out-cheats a gangster at which card game aboard a luxury train?
Poker
Poker is the bait: Newman's character poses as a boorish Chicago bookie to buy into a private high-stakes game on the 20th Century Limited, then beats a known cheat at his own trick.
Q 26Which playwright wrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth, both filmed with Paul Newman in the lead?
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth had Newman in its original Broadway cast in 1959, three years before he repeated the role on screen.
Q 27Paul Newman's breakthrough film Somebody Up There Likes Me cast him as which real-life middleweight boxer?
Rocky Graziano
Rocky Graziano's own 1955 autobiography was the basis for the film, which follows him from a violent childhood into the ring. Robert Wise directed.
Q 28Paul Newman finished second in which famous endurance race in 1979, sharing a Porsche 935?
Le Mans
Le Mans nearly gave the 54-year-old actor an even better result, until a jammed wheel nut cost his team 23 minutes in the pits.
Q 29Which watch model, a gift from his wife that Paul Newman wore while racing, set an auction record in 2017?
Rolex Daytona
Rolex Daytona watches with his style of dial are now known to collectors by the actor's own name. He had given the original to his daughter's boyfriend in 1984.
Q 30Paul Newman was dropped from wartime pilot training at Yale after being diagnosed with which condition?
Colorblindness
Colorblindness was the official reason, yet a later test found no such condition. Newman admitted he also struggled with the mathematics a pilot needs.