The Insider
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40 free The Insider trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Insider is the 1999 thriller about a tobacco scientist who decides to tell what he knows, and the television producer who fights to get his story on the air. It is a film with almost no violence that still plays like a chase, and it earned a stack of Oscar nominations. This quiz covers the film from every side: the plot and its tensest scenes, the cast and the real people they play, how and where it was made, and how critics and awards voters received it. A good share of the questions step outside the film to the true story of the whistleblower, the network and the court case behind it. It is written for fans who have seen the film more than once, for students writing about it, for quiz hosts planning a movie round, and for anyone curious about how closely Hollywood kept to the facts. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor plays crusading 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman in The Insider?
Al Pacino
Al Pacino plays the producer, and the real Lowell Bergman went on to co-write a series on worker safety that won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
Q 02Which actor earned his first Oscar nomination as whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider?
Russell Crowe
Russell Crowe won Best Actor from the National Society of Film Critics for the part, and Premiere later ranked it among the 100 greatest performances ever filmed.
Q 03After a death threat, what does Jeffrey Wigand find in his mailbox in The Insider?
A bullet
A bullet in the mailbox comes from the real case, in which an FBI agent visited the Wigand home over a death threat and a bullet placed there the night before.
Q 04Michael Gambon, tobacco boss Thomas Sandefur in The Insider, later played which Harry Potter character?
Albus Dumbledore
Albus Dumbledore became his role from 2004, when he replaced Richard Harris, who had died two years earlier.
Q 05Which Kentucky-based tobacco company fires Jeffrey Wigand before the events of The Insider?
Brown & Williamson
Brown & Williamson, the maker of Kool menthols, disappeared as a name in 2004 when its US business merged with R. J. Reynolds.
Q 06In testimony central to The Insider, seven tobacco bosses told Congress under oath they believed what?
Nicotine is not addictive
Nicotine is not addictive, each said in turn, and the real Wigand recalled being furious as he watched his former boss repeat it on television.
Q 07The Insider was nominated for Best Picture at the 2000 Oscars but lost to which film?
American Beauty
American Beauty won five Oscars that night, while The Insider went home empty-handed despite seven nominations.
Q 08Which state's lawsuit against Big Tobacco brings Jeffrey Wigand to court in The Insider?
Mississippi
Mississippi's real attorney general, Mike Moore, plays himself, and the deposition scene was filmed in the very courtroom where the testimony was given.
Q 09Which director, also known for Collateral and The Last of the Mohicans, made The Insider?
Michael Mann
Michael Mann was nominated three times over at the Oscars for it: as director, as co-writer and as producer.
Q 10The Insider is based on Marie Brenner's 1996 article about Jeffrey Wigand in which magazine?
Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair ran the piece, titled The Man Who Knew Too Much, in its May 1996 issue, three months after the Wigand interview finally aired.
Q 11Which actor won several critics' awards as 60 Minutes star Mike Wallace in The Insider?
Christopher Plummer
Christopher Plummer won supporting-actor prizes from critics' groups but no Oscar nomination, and the real Mike Wallace disliked how the film portrayed him.
Q 12In The Insider, which newspaper runs a front-page story and an editorial attacking CBS?
The New York Times
The New York Times is tipped off by Lowell Bergman himself, while the film's Wall Street Journal plays a different part, dismissing the smear dossier on Wigand as character assassination.
Q 13The Insider's Jeffrey Wigand actor won the Best Actor Oscar a year later for which film?
Gladiator
Q 21In The Insider, CBS lawyers fear that airing the Wigand interview invites a lawsuit on which ground?
Tortious interference
Tortious interference means persuading someone to break a contract, and the obscure phrase turned up in hundreds of news stories after CBS shelved the segment.
Q 22The Insider opens with a 60 Minutes interview with a sheikh tied to which militant group?
Hezbollah
Hezbollah is the group the film links to Sheikh Fadlallah, a Lebanese cleric the press often called its spiritual mentor, a label other accounts dispute.
Q 23After tobacco, the real Jeffrey Wigand of The Insider taught high school science and which language?
Japanese
Gladiator brought him wider stardom and the Oscar, one year after The Insider had earned his first nomination.
Q 14The Insider's director and its Lowell Bergman actor had teamed up four years earlier on which crime film?
Heat
Heat also starred Diane Venora, who returns in The Insider as Liane Wigand.
Q 15How does Lowell Bergman's career at 60 Minutes end in the final scene of The Insider?
He resigns
He resigns, telling Mike Wallace that the program's credibility and integrity have been permanently tarnished by the affair.
Q 16In The Insider, breaking what kind of contract would cost Jeffrey Wigand his severance pay and medical coverage?
A confidentiality agreement
A confidentiality agreement was tightened after he was fired, and it is why he first tells Bergman he can discuss nothing about his old job.
Q 17Before he was fired, Jeffrey Wigand of The Insider ran which department of his tobacco company?
Research and development
Research and development was his department from 1989, when he was hired to work on a less harmful cigarette.
Q 18What does Jeffrey Wigand discover when he comes home after testifying in court in The Insider?
His wife has left
His wife has left, taking the children with her; the film names her Liane, though Wigand's real spouse in those years was called Lucretia.
Q 19Eric Roth, who co-wrote The Insider, had already won a screenwriting Oscar for which Tom Hanks film?
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump won him the adapted screenplay Oscar, and he became known for typing his scripts in an obsolete MS-DOS program.
Q 20In The Insider, CBS bosses are accused of protecting the network's pending sale to which company?
Westinghouse
Westinghouse was closing a deal for CBS, and the film has Bergman point out that the executives blocking the story stood to grow rich from the sale.
Japanese was on his timetable at a Kentucky magnet school, and in 1996 he was one of 51 teachers honored nationwide with a Sallie Mae First Class Teacher award.
Q 24Jeffrey Wigand's family home in The Insider is in which Kentucky city?
Louisville
Louisville was where the crew began shooting, using the real suburban neighborhoods where Wigand had lived and the school where he went on to work.
Q 25On 60 Minutes, The Insider's Jeffrey Wigand said his old employer treated its tobacco with which chemical?
Ammonia
Ammonia, he said, was added to the tobacco blend to boost the effect of nicotine, so each cigarette gave the smoker a stronger kick.
Q 26After a death threat in The Insider, hostile FBI agents take which of Jeffrey Wigand's belongings?
His computer
His computer is confiscated by agents who treat him more like a suspect than a victim, and a furious Wigand responds by demanding his interview.
Q 27Which director named The Insider among the 20 best films released since he began directing in 1992?
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino put it on his top 20, and Newsweek's critic wrote that its maker could probably turn a film about needlepoint into something riveting.
Q 28Disney hoped The Insider would match the success of which earlier film about investigative reporters?
All the President's Men
All the President's Men was the model, and Roger Ebert wrote that The Insider had the greater impact on him of the two.
Q 29Which country stood in for Lebanon when the opening interview scenes of The Insider were filmed?
Israel
Israel doubled for Lebanon at the very end of a shoot that had also taken in Kentucky, the Bahamas and the Gulf Coast.
Q 30The Insider shows Lowell Bergman in snowy Montana, where he is tracking a story about which fugitive?
The Unabomber
The Unabomber story was shot at Big Bear Lake in July, with 15 tons of artificial snow spread to pass for a Montana winter.