50 free Woody Allen trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Woody Allen trivia for film buffs, New Yorkers and anyone who can quote the lobster scene. The quiz starts with Allan Konigsberg of Midwood, Brooklyn, selling jokes to Broadway writers at 16, joining Sid Caesar's stable alongside Mel Brooks and Neil Simon, and finding his nebbish persona in Greenwich Village clubs, before turning to Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Sleeper and Love and Death. It then covers the films people actually argue about - Annie Hall and its four Oscars, Manhattan in black-and-white to Gershwin, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine - along with the record screenplay Oscars, the clarinet and the Carlyle, his three marriages and the Mia Farrow years, the Amazon series, the memoir, and his 50th and, he says, final film. Roughly a third of the questions are easy and the rest are for people who have seen Stardust Memories more than once. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Woody Allen's birth name?
Allan Stewart Konigsberg
He began calling himself Woody in high school and took the name from the bandleader Woody Herman.
Q 02In which New York City borough was Allen born, at Mount Eden Hospital?
The Bronx
He was raised in Brooklyn's Midwood neighbourhood, and unlike his persona was more interested in baseball than school and picked first for teams.
Q 03How many Academy Awards did Annie Hall win, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Diane Keaton?
4
It was nominated for the Big Five and beat Star Wars for the top prize; Allen lost Best Actor but won for directing and writing.
Q 04How many Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay has Allen won, a record?
3
He also holds the record for nominations in the category, with 16; his fourth Oscar is the directing prize of 1978.
Q 05What was the working title Allen suggested for Annie Hall, a term for the inability to feel pleasure?
Anhedonia
Co-writer Marshall Brickman offered It Had to Be Jew, Rollercoaster Named Desire and Me and My Goy instead.
Q 06What is the name of Allen's character in Annie Hall, a comic picking over a failed relationship?
Alvy Singer
'Alvy' was one of Allen's own childhood nicknames and his birthday appears on a blackboard in the film.
Q 07Which media theorist steps out from behind a poster in Annie Hall to rebuke a man in a cinema queue?
Marshall McLuhan
The couple are queueing for The Sorrow and the Pity, and Alvy conjures the theorist to say the man knows nothing of his work.
Q 08Which cinematographer, called 'a technical wizard' by Allen, shot Annie Hall?
Gordon Willis
Allen called the film 'the first step toward maturity' in his filmmaking; the pairing struck many, Keaton included, as odd.
Q 09Which composer's music, including Rhapsody in Blue, inspired and scores Manhattan (1979)?
George Gershwin
It was Allen's first film in black-and-white and was shot in 2.35:1 widescreen; he has called it a mix of his previous two films.
Q 10Which actress plays Tracy, the 17-year-old dating Allen's twice-divorced character in Manhattan?
Mariel Hemingway
Streep plays his ex-wife and Keaton the mistress of his best friend, played by Michael Murphy.
Q 11In which 1983 mockumentary does Allen play a man who takes on the traits of those around him?
Zelig
Set in the 1920s, it earned Oscar nominations for cinematography and costume design and inspired the series Documentary Now!
Q 12Who plays the Depression-era waitress in The Purple Rose of Cairo whose life Jeff Daniels's character walks into?
Mia Farrow
The idea inverts Buster Keaton's Sherlock Junior, in which a projectionist walks into a film; it won the BAFTA for Best Film.
Q 13Which two actors won Supporting Oscars for Allen's 1986 Thanksgiving-framed family drama?
Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest
Q 21In Bananas (1971), Allen plays Fielding Mellish, a bumbling New Yorker caught up in what?
A Latin American revolution
Louise Lasser, then his wife, played his romantic interest; Allen said with a broad comedy 'if they're not laughing, you're dead'.
Q 22What was Allen's directorial debut, a 1966 redubbing of a Japanese spy film?
What's Up, Tiger Lily?
What's New Pussycat? (1965) was his first produced screenplay but was directed by Clive Donner.
Q 23In Take the Money and Run (1969), Allen plays which incompetent thief?
Virgil Starkwell
The film also won Allen his second screenplay Oscar and was for years his biggest box-office hit.
Q 14What is the profession of Judah Rosenthal, Martin Landau's character in Crimes and Misdemeanors?
Ophthalmologist
Allen plays the second lead, small-time documentary maker Clifford Stern; Landau was Oscar-nominated.
Q 15In which city is Allen's 2005 thriller Match Point set?
London
Allen had complained that US studios only wanted $100 million pictures; the film starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Scarlett Johansson.
Q 16Who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Vicky Cristina Barcelona?
Penélope Cruz
The film premiered at Cannes in 2008 and won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy.
Q 17Which actor plays Gil Pender, the screenwriter transported to the 1920s each night in Midnight in Paris?
Owen Wilson
The cast included Carla Bruni, then First Lady of France; the film became Allen's highest-grossing in North America at $56.3 million.
Q 18Which of Allen's films did Midnight in Paris overtake as his highest-grossing in North America?
Hannah and Her Sisters
The 1986 film had grossed $40 million; Midnight in Paris made $56.3 million.
Q 19Who won the Best Actress Oscar for playing a fallen Manhattan socialite in Blue Jasmine (2013)?
Cate Blanchett
She said she thought about the Madoff scandal while preparing; Sally Hawkins played her working-class sister in San Francisco.
Q 20In Sleeper (1973), Allen's health-food store owner wakes from cryogenic freezing in which year?
2173
All that survives of the assassinated national Leader is his nose; it was the first of four scripts Allen wrote with Marshall Brickman.
Vincent Canby called it 'a feature-length, two-reel comedy'; Bill Hader later cited it as an inspiration for Documentary Now!
Q 24Which 1975 Allen film starring Diane Keaton spoofs Russian literature in the Napoleonic era?
Love and Death
Vincent Canby called it Allen's 'grandest work'; the next year Allen starred in Martin Ritt's blacklist drama The Front.
Q 25For which TV star did the young Allen write alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon?
Sid Caesar
By then he was earning $1,500 a week; he had started at $25 a week writing for humorist Herb Shriner.
Q 26At which Manhattan nightclub did Allen make his professional stage debut as a stand-up in October 1960?
The Blue Angel
Shelley Berman introduced him as a young TV writer performing his own material; Dick Cavett recalled the audience mostly ignoring him.
Q 27Which comedian did Allen name as his personal favourite among his Greenwich Village contemporaries?
Mort Sahl
He said Sahl 'came along with a whole new style of humor, opening up vistas for people like me'.
Q 28How many times did Allen sit in The Tonight Show host's chair over nine years of guest spots?
17
He first appeared with Johnny Carson on 1 November 1963 and hosted one of his last shows in 1971 with Bob Hope as guest.
Q 29What was Allen's first big Broadway success, which opened in 1966 and ran for 598 performances?
Don't Drink the Water
He remade it for television in 1994 with Michael J. Fox and Mayim Bialik.
Q 30In which 1969 Broadway show did Diane Keaton first act opposite Allen, earning a Tony nomination?
Play It Again, Sam
She said she 'fell in love with him right away' and went on to make eight of his films.