Spotlight Movie Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
48 free Spotlight Movie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Spotlight trivia quiz covers Tom McCarthy's 2015 Best Picture winner about The Boston Globe's investigation into child abuse by Catholic priests. It follows the story from the 1976 police station to the morning the phones start ringing: Marty Baron's arrival, Mitchell Garabedian's reluctant cooperation, Phil Saviano and SNAP, Richard Sipe's 6% estimate, the list of 87 names, the treatment centre near Matt Carroll's home, the unsealed documents tying Cardinal Law to the cover-up, and Robby Robinson's confession about the 1993 list. Behind the scenes it covers the script that sat on the Black List, why McCarthy turned the film down at first, the actor who regretted saying no, the Toronto Sears store dressed as the Globe newsroom, the eight-month edit, and what the film changed from the real investigation. It ends with the 88th Academy Awards, where Spotlight became the first Best Picture winner since 1952 to take home just one other award. Note: this page is about the 2015 film, not the theatre term. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Spotlight?
Tom McCarthy
Tom McCarthy once played a notoriously unscrupulous reporter, Scott Templeton in The Wire, and a few staff greeted him with shouts of 'Templeton!' when he walked into the real Globe newsroom.
Q 02Who plays reporter Michael Rezendes in Spotlight?
Mark Ruffalo
Mark Ruffalo shadowed the real Rezendes at his newsroom desk and, the reporter recalls, grabbed the mouse to scrub through video from the investigation he was working on.
Q 03Who plays Walter 'Robby' Robinson, head of the Spotlight team?
Michael Keaton
Michael Keaton spent weeks watching old tapes of Robinson, then studied him across a dinner table; Robinson says the actor caught every mannerism and even dropped his voice to match.
Q 04Who plays reporter Sacha Pfeiffer in Spotlight?
Rachel McAdams
Rachel McAdams peppered the real Pfeiffer with texts during the shoot: heels or tennis shoes at the office, what colour bag she carried, even which size of sticky note she wrote on.
Q 05Who plays incoming Globe editor Marty Baron in Spotlight?
Liev Schreiber
Liev Schreiber's Baron is the outsider who sets it all off: new to Boston and the Globe's first Jewish editor, he reads one column and asks why the paper hasn't dug deeper.
Q 06In Spotlight, who plays the combative attorney who steers Rezendes toward the Church's sealed documents?
Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci plays the prickly lawyer for one priest's many victims, who brushes reporters off until Rezendes, against orders, lets slip that he works for Spotlight.
Q 07Who plays editor Ben Bradlee Jr. in Spotlight?
John Slattery
John Slattery spent about three hours with the real Bradlee before filming, lunch included; Bradlee said it impressed him that the cast took the time to know the people they were playing.
Q 08Which priest's 1976 arrest opens Spotlight?
John Geoghan
John Geoghan walks free that night: a senior cleric reassures the victims' mother, a prosecutor tells the police to keep the arrest from the press, and no charges follow.
Q 09The father of Spotlight editor Ben Bradlee Jr. is a main character in which earlier journalism film?
All the President's Men
All the President's Men shows Ben Bradlee backing two young reporters against the White House; a generation later his son oversaw the Globe team that took on the Church.
Q 10In Spotlight, the survivor who visits the newsroom to brief the team speaks for which victims' group?
SNAP
SNAP is the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. The man who founded its New England chapter first went public in 1992 because he believed he was dying of AIDS and had little left to lose.
Q 11Which records do Spotlight's reporters comb to find more suspect priests?
Church directories
Church directories listed some priests as on 'sick leave' or 'unassigned', and the team realised those labels marked men who had been removed after abuse complaints.
Q 12Which actor is the uncredited voice of the psychotherapist Sipe on the phone in Spotlight?
Richard Jenkins
Richard Jenkins is heard but never seen: his Sipe, an ex-priest who spent decades studying abusive clergy, tells the reporters by phone that their shocking tally sounds low.
Q 13How many priests end up on the Spotlight team's list in Boston?
87
87 names, three short of what a therapist's rule of thumb had predicted for Boston: a figure one Globe editor had scoffed at, saying that if there were that many, people would know.
Q 21Which Pulitzer Prize did the Globe win for the Spotlight series on abuse in the Church?
Public Service
Public Service is the only Pulitzer that comes as a gold medal, and the 2003 citation praised coverage that 'pierced secrecy' and 'produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church'.
Q 22Who plays reporter Matt Carroll in Spotlight?
Brian d'Arcy James
Brian d'Arcy James, cast late and tied to a Broadway show, met the real Carroll over supper in New York and had him say 'horror' again and again to catch his thick Boston accent.
Q 23Which star of The Infiltrator turned down a role in Spotlight because the two shoots clashed?
Bryan Cranston
Q 14In Spotlight, what does reporter Matt Carroll discover a block from his home?
A treatment centre for abusive priests
A treatment centre for abusive priests replaced a stranger truth: the real Carroll found that one of the accused priests lived around the corner, and the filmmakers thought nobody would believe it.
Q 15Which event forces the Spotlight team to put its investigation on hold?
The September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks pulled the whole newsroom onto one story: the first hijacked plane had left from Boston, and Rezendes was sent to Florida to chase the hijackers' flight schools.
Q 16In Spotlight, which character warns that 'if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one'?
Mitchell Garabedian
Mitchell Garabedian says it to Rezendes after calling himself an outsider, an Armenian in a city run by insiders; the survivors' lawyer means that everyone who looked away shares the blame.
Q 17What does Robby Robinson confess before Spotlight's story runs?
He once buried a list of 20 priests
He once buried a list of 20 priests: the scene is invented, but the writers found the overlooked 1993 story it rests on themselves, and the real Robinson, Metro editor at the time, owned up to it.
Q 18Who plays attorney Eric MacLeish in Spotlight?
Billy Crudup
Billy Crudup plays him as a slick operator who settled abuse claims in private for years, which is why Robby accuses him of 'turning child abuse into a cottage industry'.
Q 19What happens the morning after Spotlight's story runs?
The team is flooded with calls from victims
The team is flooded with calls from victims: the story had printed a hotline number, and the real reporters heard from more than 300 survivors around Boston within a month or two.
Q 20Where does Spotlight's epilogue say Cardinal Law ended up after resigning?
A basilica in Rome
A basilica in Rome: far from being punished, Law was made archpriest of St. Mary Major, one of the city's great churches, and the audience at the film's premiere burst out laughing at the news.
Bryan Cranston told Larry King it is the part he most regrets turning down: he was already committed to the other film, and the one he missed went on to win Best Picture.
Q 24Spotlight appeared in 2013 on which annual survey of Hollywood's best unproduced scripts?
The Black List
The Black List ranks the unmade scripts that film insiders liked most each December; Spotlight made the 2013 survey, yet major studios passed and its funding fell through three times.
Q 25Spotlight's newsroom is a replica that was put up inside an abandoned property of which retailer?
Sears
Sears had left the place empty and due for demolition, so the crew gutted it and rebuilt the Globe newsroom so exactly that the real reporters fell silent when they first walked in.
Q 26Spotlight is set in Boston, but in which city was most of it filmed?
Toronto
Toronto hosted the bulk of the shoot: only about four shooting days were spent in Boston, and even the Boston police station of the opening scene is a former Toronto police building.
Q 27Which composer of a blockbuster fantasy saga wrote Spotlight's spare, piano-led score?
Howard Shore
Howard Shore, who won Oscars for The Lord of the Rings, went small here: he wrote for a ten-piece chamber group led by a piano, an instrument he said has a certain truthfulness.
Q 28The real Michael Rezendes sits a few rows behind the actors in a Spotlight scene shot at which Boston venue?
Fenway Park
Fenway Park lent the scene a real crowd: it was filmed in the stands during a Red Sox game against the Rays, with several of the Globe's own journalists invited to sit among the extras.
Q 29Which former priest's doorstep confession in Spotlight is shown earlier than it really happened?
Ronald Paquin
Ronald Paquin really did admit to abusing boys, but about a month after the film ends and far less bluntly; Pfeiffer says the confession came gradually and was pulled back in time for drama.
Q 30At which film festival did Spotlight have its world premiere?
Venice
Venice showed it out of competition, and its director told the press there that he expected no reaction from the Church but would love Pope Francis and his cardinals to see the film.