50 free Sidney Poitier trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Sidney Poitier trivia covers a life that reads like a screenplay: a premature baby born in Miami to Bahamian tomato farmers, a teenage dishwasher in New York taught to read by a waiter, a fake psychiatric discharge from the Army, a failed first audition, and then a career that broke nearly every colour barrier in Hollywood, culminating in the first Best Actor Oscar for a Black performer in 1964. This quiz follows him from the American Negro Theatre through No Way Out, Blackboard Jungle and The Defiant Ones, the Broadway premiere of A Raisin in the Sun, the Oscar for Lilies of the Field, the extraordinary 1967 of To Sir, with Love, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and on to his second career directing comedies like Uptown Saturday Night and Stir Crazy. It also covers the honours: knighthood, Kennedy Center Honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a decade as the Bahamas' ambassador to Japan. Easy questions suit anyone who knows 'They call me Mister Tibbs!'; the expert tier is for classic-film devotees. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Poitier and his films, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which US city was Sidney Poitier born in 1927?
Miami
His Bahamian parents were there selling tomatoes; the premature birth gave him US citizenship.
Q 02Where in the Bahamas did Poitier grow up until the age of ten?
Cat Island
He did not see a car, electricity or a film until the family moved to Nassau.
Q 03For which 1963 film did Poitier become the first Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor?
Lilies of the Field
He played Homer Smith, a handyman who builds a chapel for East German nuns in Arizona.
Q 04What is the name of Poitier's Oscar-winning character, a handyman who builds a chapel for nuns?
Homer Smith
The nuns believe God has sent him to build their chapel; the film was shot on a ranch owned by Linda Ronstadt's family.
Q 05Which hymn do the nuns learn from Poitier's handyman in his Oscar-winning film?
'Amen'
Their echoing rendition plays as he drives away at the end of the film.
Q 06Poitier's breakthrough film role was as a high-school student in which 1955 film?
Blackboard Jungle
He played the rebellious but musical Gregory Miller opposite Glenn Ford's teacher.
Q 07Poitier's 1955 breakthrough film is remembered as the first major Hollywood film to feature what?
Rock and roll music
Bill Haley's 'Rock Around the Clock' plays over the credits and sparked riots in some cinemas.
Q 08What was Poitier's film debut, a 1950 noir in which he played a doctor treating a racist criminal?
No Way Out
Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed; the bigot was played by Richard Widmark, who became a lifelong friend.
Q 09In The Defiant Ones (1958), Poitier and Tony Curtis play escaped convicts who are what?
Chained together
The film earned Poitier the first Best Actor Oscar nomination for a Black performer, and a Silver Bear at Berlin.
Q 10Who directed The Defiant Ones and, nine years later, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
Stanley Kramer
Kramer specialised in message pictures; Poitier had to audition for Tracy and Hepburn at two dinner parties to win the later role.
Q 11What award did Poitier win at the 1958 Berlin Film Festival for The Defiant Ones?
The Silver Bear for Best Actor
He also won the BAFTA for Best Foreign Actor for the same performance.
Q 12Poitier starred in the 1959 Broadway premiere of which Lorraine Hansberry play?
A Raisin in the Sun
He earned a Tony nomination and repeated the role of Walter Lee in the 1961 film.
Q 13Why was Poitier's singing dubbed in the 1959 film Porgy and Bess?
He was tone deaf and could not sing
Q 21Interracial marriage was illegal in how many states just before Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
17
The Supreme Court struck those laws down in Loving v. Virginia on 12 June 1967, shortly after filming ended.
Q 22In To Sir, with Love, Poitier plays a teacher in which part of London?
The East End
The film was based on E. R. Braithwaite's autobiographical novel and directed by James Clavell.
Q 23Which singer debuted in To Sir, with Love and sang its title song, a five-week US number one?
Lulu
It ended up as the best-selling single in America in 1967.
How was Poitier paid for To Sir, with Love, in one of the shrewdest deals in film history?
Robert McFerrin supplied Porgy's voice, uncredited; Dorothy Dandridge's Bess was dubbed by Adele Addison.
Q 14Which three films did Poitier release in 1967, the commercial peak of his career?
To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
A poll the following year named him America's top box-office star.
Q 15What is the name of Poitier's Philadelphia detective in In the Heat of the Night?
Virgil Tibbs
The character returned in two sequels, They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) and The Organization (1971).
Q 16Who played the prejudiced Mississippi police chief opposite Poitier in In the Heat of the Night?
Rod Steiger
Steiger won the Best Actor Oscar; the film took Best Picture and five awards in all.
Q 17In which state was In the Heat of the Night mostly filmed, despite being set in Mississippi?
Illinois
The town of Sparta, Illinois lent its name and its storefronts to the fictional Sparta, Mississippi.
Q 18What does Tibbs do when the plantation owner Endicott strikes him across the face?
He slaps him back
The scene was startling for 1967 audiences; the line 'They call me Mister Tibbs!' ranks 16th on the AFI's list of movie quotes.
Q 19Who performed the title song of In the Heat of the Night, over a score by Quincy Jones?
Ray Charles
The score was nominated for a Grammy.
Q 20In Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Poitier is engaged to the daughter of which screen couple?
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn
It was their ninth and final film together; Tracy died 17 days after finishing his scenes.
A percentage of the gross box office
He took 10% of the gross; Columbia had to renegotiate when it realised the annual cap would take 80 years to pay out.
Q 25In A Patch of Blue (1965), Poitier befriends a white teenager who is what?
Blind
Scenes of the two kissing were cut when the film played in the Southern United States.
Q 26What was Poitier's directorial debut in 1972?
Buck and the Preacher
He replaced Joseph Sargent after a few days and co-starred with Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee.
Q 27Which two comedians star in Stir Crazy (1980), long the top-grossing film by a Black director?
Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor
They play friends framed for a bank robbery and given 125-year sentences; it grossed $101 million on a $10 million budget.
Q 28With which comedian did Poitier make Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do It Again and A Piece of the Action?
Bill Cosby
They were made through First Artists, the company Poitier formed with Barbra Streisand and Paul Newman.
Q 29Poitier co-founded First Artists Production Company with Paul Newman and which other star?
Barbra Streisand
The idea was to let actors develop their own projects.
Q 30Which company rejected Poitier at his first audition because he could not read the script fluently?
The American Negro Theatre
An elderly Jewish waiter then spent months teaching him to read from the newspaper, and he passed the second time.