50 free Sean Connery trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Sean Connery trivia quiz covers the whole of a remarkable life. It starts in Edinburgh: the milk round for St Cuthbert's Co-op, the Royal Navy tattoos, the coffin polishing and artist's modelling, the bodybuilding contest that led to South Pacific, the football contract Matt Busby dangled, and the gangsters he knocked out on a dance-hall balcony. Then come the Bond years: how Dana Broccoli and Terence Young shaped the role, Ian Fleming's change of heart, the shark that got through the Plexiglas on Thunderball, and the return he swore would never happen. The second half looks at the actor beyond 007: Hitchcock's Marnie and Lumet's The Hill, The Man Who Would Be King with Michael Caine, the scarlet mankini of Zardoz, the Oscar for The Untouchables, Henry Jones Sr., Draco the dragon, the roles he turned down in The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and the film that drove him into retirement. There are also questions on his SNP politics, the knighthood, his golf and the Bahamas. 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 James Bond and Scotland quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Sean Connery born in 1930?
Edinburgh
He grew up at 176 Fountainbridge and was known as Tommy, and later 'Big Tam', before adopting his middle name.
Q 02What was Connery's first job?
Milkman
Decades later a taxi driver was amazed he could name every street; 'As a boy I used to deliver milk round here,' he explained.
Q 03Which two tattoos did Connery acquire in the Royal Navy?
'Mum and Dad' and 'Scotland Forever'
He was discharged at 19 with a duodenal ulcer, a family complaint, after training as a gunner and serving on HMS Formidable.
Q 04Which football manager reportedly offered Connery a 25-pounds-a-week contract?
Matt Busby
He turned it down, reasoning that a footballer is over the hill by 30 and he was already 23: 'one of my more intelligent moves'.
Q 05Connery learned about auditions for South Pacific while competing in what?
A bodybuilding contest
He had begun bodybuilding at 18 and entered the Mr. Universe contest, though accounts differ on how he placed.
Q 06Which street crew gave Connery a 'hard man' reputation after he cracked two members' heads together on a balcony?
The Valdor
Six of them had followed him to the Palais de Danse after he stopped them stealing his jacket in a billiard hall.
Q 07Which future star did Connery befriend for life at a party during South Pacific in 1954?
Michael Caine
They later co-starred in The Man Who Would Be King, which both called their favourite film.
Q 08Which gangster pulled a gun on Connery on the 1958 set of Another Time, Another Place and got flattened?
Johnny Stompanato
Lana Turner's boyfriend suspected an affair; Connery later lay low after threats from men linked to Stompanato's boss Mickey Cohen.
Q 09In which 1959 Disney film about leprechauns did Connery have a leading role?
Darby O'Gill and the Little People
The New York Times dismissed him as 'merely tall, dark, and handsome'.
Q 10Which Shakespeare character did Connery play in the BBC's 1960 series An Age of Kings?
Hotspur
He played Macbeth separately in a 1961 Canadian TV film opposite Zoe Caldwell.
Q 11How many times did Connery play James Bond on film?
Seven
Six for Eon Productions plus the 1983 non-Eon Never Say Never Again, tying Roger Moore's record.
Q 12Which was Connery's first Bond film?
Dr. No
After it opened in 1962 he received thousands of fan letters a week and 'Bond... James Bond' entered the language.
Q 13Which producer's wife is credited with persuading her husband that Connery was the right man for Bond?
Dana Broccoli
Ian Fleming initially grumbled that he was 'an overgrown stunt-man' but changed his mind after the Dr. No premiere.
Q 21Connery's 1967 documentary covered a shipyard industrial-relations experiment in which city?
Glasgow
The Bowler and the Bunnet covered the Fairfield Experiment; he later said it began his long association with the SNP.
Q 22In The Man Who Would Be King (1975), two ex-soldiers set themselves up as kings where?
Kafiristan
John Huston directed the Kipling adaptation, and both actors called it their favourite film.
Q 23In which 1974 John Boorman sci-fi film did Connery wear a much-mocked scarlet mankini?
Zardoz
Often called one of the weirdest films ever made, it has since gained a cult following; Boorman said Connery wrote poetry between takes.
Q 14From which Highland village did Ian Fleming, impressed by Connery, give Bond a Scottish father in You Only Live Twice?
Glencoe
Fleming had earlier said Connery was 'not what I envisioned of James Bond looks'.
Q 15Which director 'took Sean under his wing', teaching him how to walk, talk and even eat as Bond?
Terence Young
Moneypenny actress Lois Maxwell recalled the tutoring; Young had already directed Connery in Action of the Tiger in 1957.
Q 16During Thunderball, which creature breached a Plexiglas partition and forced Connery out of Largo's pool?
A shark
He had insisted designer Ken Adam build the barrier after reading the script; it was not a fixed structure.
Q 17Which was the only Bond film Connery made after Diamonds Are Forever, produced outside Eon in 1983?
Never Say Never Again
His wife supplied the title, a dig at his vow never to play Bond again; fight choreographer Steven Seagal broke his wrist during filming.
Q 18Which future action star broke Connery's wrist while choreographing fights on his 1983 Bond comeback?
Steven Seagal
The troubled production soured him on the studios and he made no films for two years.
Q 19Told that Hitchcock's top leading man never asked for a script, how did Connery reply before Marnie?
'I'm not Cary Grant'
He worried about being typecast as a spy and did not want a rerun of North by Northwest.
Q 20Which Sidney Lumet film of 1965 was the first of five Connery made with the director?
The Hill
Peter Bradshaw calls it and Marnie his two great non-Bond pictures of the 1960s; it won Best Screenplay at Cannes.
Q 24Connery's casting as Agamemnon in Time Bandits came from a joke in whose script?
Michael Palin's
The stage direction described the character unmasking as 'Sean Connery – or someone of equal but cheaper stature'.
Q 25Connery took voice lessons for which musical role before turning it down in 1982?
Daddy Warbucks in Annie
John Huston was directing; the same year Connery narrated G'ole!, the official film of the 1982 World Cup.
Q 26For which 1986 film did Connery win the BAFTA for Best Actor?
The Name of the Rose
The same year, Highlander showed he could play older mentor to a young lead, a role he repeated for years.
Q 27For which film did Connery win his Academy Award?
The Untouchables
He was the first Scottish actor to win a major Oscar, playing a hard-nosed cop alongside Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness.
Q 28Who played Al Capone opposite Connery in the film that won him his Oscar?
Robert De Niro
Roger Ebert wrote that 'the best performance in the movie is Connery'.
Q 29What was the first name of Connery's character, Indiana's father, in The Last Crusade?
Henry
Harrison Ford said Connery's suggestions at the writing stage gave the film 'a lot more complexity and value'.
Q 30Connery voiced Draco, a dragon, in which 1996 film?
Dragonheart
That year he also starred in The Rock; in 1991 he had a cameo as Richard the Lionheart in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.