Steve Martin Trivia
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50 free Steve Martin trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Steve Martin trivia quiz covers a career that started selling guidebooks at Disneyland and now spans stand-up, film, novels, plays, Broadway musicals and bluegrass. There are questions on the 1970s arena years — the white suit, the arrow through the head, 'Excuse me', King Tut, the Festrunk Brothers with Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live — and on the films that followed: The Jerk, Pennies from Heaven, All of Me, Three Amigos, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Roxanne, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Parenthood, L.A. Story, Father of the Bride, Bowfinger and The Pink Panther. You will also be asked about the writer and musician: Cruel Shoes, Shopgirl, Born Standing Up, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, the Bright Star musical with Edie Brickell, the Grammy-winning banjo albums with the Steep Canyon Rangers, and the late-career reinvention with Martin Short and Selena Gomez in Only Murders in the Building. Some questions are easy for anyone who has seen his films; others will test lifelong fans. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and each question carries a citation to the page it came from.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Steve Martin was born in 1945 in which central Texas city?
Waco
Waco, also the birthplace of Dr Pepper, was home only until he was five, when the Martins moved to Inglewood, California, where his father sold real estate and acted at a local playhouse.
Q 02Where was Steve Martin's first job, selling guidebooks and later working in a magic shop?
Disneyland
Disneyland hired him at 10 to sell 25-cent guidebooks, and he stayed eight years, watching vaudevillian Wally Boag's act until he had it memorised.
Q 03What did Martin major in at California State University, Long Beach, before switching to theatre at UCLA?
Philosophy
Philosophy. He credited his logic classes with his act: once he decided there was no cause and effect, twisting a punch line into a non sequitur came easily.
Q 04Martin won his first Emmy in 1969, aged 23, as a writer on which show?
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour hired him after a girlfriend who danced on the show handed his college writing to head writer Mason Williams, who at first paid him out of his own pocket.
Q 05In 1968 Martin won a Dating Game date with the daughter of which Rat Pack star?
Dean
Dean Martin's daughter Deana chose him, years before the unknown TV writer who happened to share her surname became famous himself.
Q 06As of 2022, who had hosted Saturday Night Live more often than Steve Martin?
Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin had hosted 17 times to Martin's 16, taking the record from him in 2011 on a night when Martin turned up to demand he take a drug test.
Q 07Which hand gesture is Martin credited with popularising through his Saturday Night Live appearances?
Air quotes
Air quotes. His ironic finger-waggling in the late 1970s is credited with carrying the gesture into pop culture, a decade before the name's earliest known use, in a 1989 Spy magazine essay.
Q 08Martin and Aykroyd's 'wild and crazy' Festrunk Brothers came from which country?
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia. The Festrunks had emigrated to America, where their swaggering pursuit of 'foxes' rarely impressed the women they met.
Q 09Martin's 1977 album Let's Get Small launched which national catchphrase?
Excuse me!
Excuse me! His drawn-out 'Well, excuuuse me!' swept the country, and the record became the best-selling comedy album of its year and won a Grammy.
Q 10Martin's 1978 novelty hit 'King Tut' was backed by which group, credited as the 'Toot Uncommons'?
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were old friends: Martin went to high school with their banjo player John McEuen, whose brother Bill managed both the band and the comedian.
Q 11In one stand-up routine, Martin claimed that his real name was what?
Gern Blanston
Gern Blanston was pure invention, confessed deadpan as his real name. The riff took on a life of its own, and a Gern Blanston website later appeared online.
Q 12Which gag prop was as much a part of Martin's 1970s stage look as his white suit?
Arrow through the head
Arrow through the head: in his 1970s act he put on nose glasses, bunny ears and the fake arrow, then careened across the stage in a fit of happy feet.
Q 13Whose 2016 show did Martin open with a surprise stand-up comeback?
Jerry Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld's crowd at New York's Beacon Theatre had no warning: Martin walked on as the opening act and did ten minutes of jokes and banjo, his first stand-up set since he walked away from it decades earlier.
Q 21In the 1986 film of Little Shop of Horrors, Martin played a sadistic what?
Dentist
Dentist Orin Scrivello is Audrey's abusive boyfriend, and he gets a fitting exit: after he dies by accident, shop assistant Seymour feeds him to the man-eating plant.
Q 22In Planes, Trains and Automobiles, John Candy's character Del Griffith sells what?
Shower curtain rings
Shower curtain rings, 'the best in the world' by Del's own account, mark him as the rumpled opposite of Martin's sleek advertising man, whose cab he unknowingly takes two days before Thanksgiving.
Q 23Roxanne (1987), which Martin wrote and starred in, is a modern version of which play?
Cyrano de Bergerac
Q 14Martin's 1977 short The Absent-Minded Waiter was nominated for what?
An Academy Award
An Academy Award nomination for best live-action short went to the film Martin wrote himself, about a waiter so hopeless that diners ask for his table: he hands out thousands in change for bills nobody has paid.
Q 15Who directed The Jerk (1979), Martin's first starring role?
Carl Reiner
Carl Reiner directed Martin three more times, and their next film was born over lunch: stuck on another script, they wondered about cutting Martin into old Bogart movies, which became Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.
Q 16The Jerk cost about $4 million, so roughly how much did it gross worldwide?
$100 million
$100 million, roughly 25 times what it cost. Martin co-wrote the film as his first starring vehicle, and its success led to three more comedies with the same director.
Q 17In The Jerk, who raised Martin's character, Navin Johnson?
A family of Black sharecroppers in Mississippi
A family of Black sharecroppers in Mississippi raised Navin, who is the last to notice he is white; hearing on his birthday that he was adopted sends him off to St. Louis to find himself.
Q 18Martin took tap-dancing lessons for months for which 1981 musical drama, his first serious role?
Pennies from Heaven
Pennies from Heaven cast Martin as a Depression-era song-sheet salesman who does everything but act funny. It disappointed at the box office, and he blamed himself: 'it's me and not a comedy.'
Q 19Which director met Martin in London about starring in a film he made years later?
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick had Martin in mind for a comic take on the novella he later filmed straight as Eyes Wide Shut, with Tom Cruise in the lead.
Q 20In Three Amigos (1986), which bandit do the characters of Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short end up fighting?
El Guapo
El Guapo is terrorising a Mexican village that sends for the Amigos. The three fired silent-film actors arrive expecting to put on a show, not to face a real bandit.
Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand's 1897 play, lends the film its plot and its hero's initials: C.D. Bales woos Roxanne through a handsome, tongue-tied stand-in, just as Cyrano did.
Q 24In Roxanne, what is C.D. Bales's job?
Fire chief
Fire chief C.D. Bales is witty, brave and well liked in his small town, yet it is a shy new recruit on his own crew who catches Roxanne's eye.
Q 25Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) paired Martin with which British actor?
Michael Caine
Michael Caine plays a suave Riviera con man who challenges Martin's lowbrow rival to a contest: whoever swindles their next mark first can stay, and the loser must leave town.
Q 26Who played Estragon opposite Martin's Vladimir in Mike Nichols's 1988 Waiting for Godot?
Robin Williams
Robin Williams and Martin made the seven-week Lincoln Center run a sellout before rehearsals began: subscribers took every seat, so the box office never opened to the public.
Q 27Who directed Parenthood (1989), in which Martin played the anxious father Gil Buckman?
Ron Howard
Ron Howard's hit recast Martin as the anxious suburban dad, a part he went on to play again in Father of the Bride and Cheaper by the Dozen.
Q 28Martin wrote and starred in L.A. Story (1991) opposite which actress, his wife at the time?
Victoria Tennant
Victoria Tennant plays the British journalist his bored TV weatherman falls for, nudged towards her by secret messages from a freeway sign. The couple married in 1986 and divorced in 1994.
Q 29In Bowfinger (1999), which Martin wrote, he starred opposite which comedian?
Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphy plays Kit Ramsey, the biggest star in Hollywood, whom Bowfinger's ragtag crew films in secret because he never agreed to be in their movie.
Q 30In the 2006 remake of The Pink Panther, Martin played which character?
Inspector Clouseau
Inspector Clouseau gets the Pink Panther case only as a decoy: Chief Inspector Dreyfus puts the bumbling detective in the spotlight while his best officers work in secret. Martin co-wrote the script.