Steven Spielberg Trivia
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50 free Steven Spielberg trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
43 free Steven Spielberg trivia questions with answers. Steven Spielberg invented the summer blockbuster with Jaws, made the most-seen family film of the 1980s in E.T., won his Oscars for two very different World War II films, and is still working. This quiz covers the whole career: the Eagle Scout who snuck onto the Universal lot, Duel and The Sugarland Express, the shark that would not work, Indiana Jones and the birth of PG-13, Jurassic Park's box-office record, Schindler's List and the Shoah Foundation, DreamWorks, and the late-period run from Lincoln to The Fabelmans. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has seen his big films, a third are medium and the rest are for people who know why his company is called Amblin. Every answer is checked against the reference pages for Spielberg and his films.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Steven Spielberg born in 1946?
Cincinnati
Cincinnati: there his grandmother taught English to Holocaust survivors, and one taught little Steven his numbers from the tattoo on his arm.
Q 02Young Spielberg made a short Western film to earn what?
A Boy Scout photography merit badge
A Boy Scout photography merit badge: after a movie train wreck terrified him, he also staged and filmed crashes with his Lionel train set.
Q 03Which film school famously rejected the young Spielberg because of his mediocre grades?
USC
USC: turned down, he studied elsewhere, then dropped out when Universal hired him to direct television.
Q 04Spielberg later named his production company after which 1968 short film of his?
Amblin'
Amblin': impressed, Universal executive Sidney Sheinberg offered Spielberg a seven-year directing contract.
Q 05Spielberg's directorial debut, Duel (1971), pits Dennis Weaver's salesman against what?
A menacing tanker truck
A menacing tanker truck: after Duel aired on ABC, Universal had Spielberg shoot extra scenes so it could be released in cinemas.
Q 06Which 1974 Goldie Hawn film was Spielberg's first theatrical feature, and his first with composer John Williams?
The Sugarland Express
The Sugarland Express: it won Best Screenplay at Cannes and was inspired by a real 1969 case of young parents who took a policeman hostage to get their son back.
Q 07Jaws was shot mostly on location on which Massachusetts island?
Martha's Vineyard
The sandy sea floor stayed shallower than 35 feet for 12 miles offshore, letting the mechanical sharks work out of sight of land.
Q 08Jaws held the record as highest-grossing film in history until which movie arrived two years later?
Star Wars
Star Wars: Jaws's mechanical sharks kept malfunctioning, so Spielberg mostly suggested the shark, which he said made it a better film.
Q 09In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the aliens' coordinates lead to which Wyoming landmark?
Devils Tower
Devils Tower: haunted by its shape, Roy sculpts it in mashed potatoes at dinner, then builds a model so big his family leaves him.
Q 10Which 1979 Spielberg action-comedy, written by Zemeckis and Gale, was regarded as his first critical flop?
1941
One critic called it "the most conspicuous waste since the last major oil spill", though it still grossed $92 million.
Q 11Raiders of the Lost Ark was based on a story by which two men?
George Lucas and Philip Kaufman
George Lucas and Philip Kaufman: Kaufman, developing the idea with Lucas in 1975, suggested the lost Ark of the Covenant as the film's goal.
Q 12Which 1984 film directed by Spielberg led him to suggest the new PG-13 rating?
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: parents were irate that it got a PG, so Spielberg suggested a new rating between PG and R.
Q 13Who wrote the screenplay for Spielberg's 1982 film about a stranded alien and a boy named Elliott?
Q 21The main theme of Schindler's List is played on which solo instrument?
Violin
Violin: Itzhak Perlman plays it, and the crew shot at real locations, including Oskar Schindler's actual factory.
Q 22What did Spielberg do with his profits from Schindler's List?
Founded the Shoah Foundation
Founded the Shoah Foundation: he refused a salary for the film, calling it 'blood money', and the foundation set out to videotape survivors' testimony.
Q 23Spielberg co-founded DreamWorks in 1994 with which two partners?
Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen
Melissa Mathison
Melissa Mathison: then Harrison Ford's girlfriend, she at first turned the job down, saying she meant to quit writing.
Q 14Which actor played Elliott, the boy who befriends E.T.?
Henry Thomas
Henry Thomas: Spielberg shot the film in rough chronological order so the young cast's goodbyes to E.T. would feel real.
Q 15Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985) was adapted from a novel by whom?
Alice Walker
Alice Walker: wary of Hollywood, she required that half the production team be African American, female or 'people of the Third World'.
Q 16Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987) was the first American film in decades to shoot in which city?
Shanghai
Shanghai: David Lean was originally set to direct, with Spielberg producing, before Spielberg took the job himself.
Q 17In Hook (1991), who plays the grown-up Peter Pan?
Robin Williams
Robin Williams: his Peter Banning is a workaholic lawyer who has forgotten he was Peter Pan, until Captain Hook kidnaps his children.
Q 18Jurassic Park surpassed which film to become the highest-grossing movie of all time in 1993?
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: Elliott lures the alien with Reese's Pieces, and sales of the candy soared after the film came out.
Q 19Jurassic Park is set on which fictional island off Costa Rica?
Isla Nublar
Isla Nublar: Spielberg supervised the film's post-production from Poland while he was shooting Schindler's List.
Q 20Schindler's List was based on a Booker Prize-winning novel by which Australian author?
Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally: survivor Poldek Pfefferberg, who made telling Oskar Schindler's story his life's mission, inspired him to write it.
Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen: Katzenberg approached the other two after resigning from Disney, and their initials form the SKG in DreamWorks SKG.
Q 24Which 1997 Spielberg film about an 1839 slave-ship revolt was his first release under DreamWorks?
Amistad
Amistad: producer Debbie Allen had researched the revolt for years, and Spielberg drew on her research to reenact the historical scenes.
Q 25Saving Private Ryan's Omaha Beach sequence was actually filmed on a beach in which country?
Ireland
Ireland: associate producer Kevin De La Noy already had ties to the Irish Army from shooting Braveheart there.
Q 26Spielberg's first two Best Director Oscars both came for films about which war?
WWII
WWII: Schindler's List won him the first and Saving Private Ryan the second, and as a boy he made 8 mm war movies partly inspired by his father's WWII stories.
Q 27A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) was a long-gestating project of which director, who died in 1999?
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick: he believed the story was closer to Spielberg's sensibilities than his own and wanted Spielberg to direct it.
Q 28In Spielberg's Minority Report, what do the psychic 'precogs' foresee before they happen?
Murders
Murders: Precrime chief John Anderton arrests would-be killers, until the precogs predict that he will commit a murder himself.
Q 29Catch Me If You Can (2002) is based on the autobiography of which con artist?
Frank Abagnale
Frank Abagnale: much of his con-man story has since been heavily disputed, and records suggest many of his claims were exaggerated.
Q 30Spielberg's Munich (2005) dramatizes Israel's response to the murder of its athletes at which event?
The Summer Olympics
The Summer Olympics: the film follows a Mossad-backed team sent to assassinate Palestinians held responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre.