The Ultimate Oscar Quiz
How well do you know your Academy Awards? Can you even remember the names of the actors and actresses who won those precious gold statuettes this time last year? Say no more and test the level of your knowledge in relation to the 25 questions below to see how Oscar-savvy you really are (there are clues in some of the pictures provided by the way):
1. Which three films jointly hold the record for most Oscar wins?
2. Which director has won the most Oscars in the Best Director category and for what films?
3. Who holds the distinction for most Oscar wins in all acting categories?
4. Who – infamously – had Sacheen Littlefeather refuse to accept his Best Actor Oscar?
5. Which director has won the Best Foreign Language Film the most times?
6. What five Best Picture winners failed to receive a Best Director nomination?
7. The category of Best Animated Feature Film was added to the Academy Awards in the early 2000s – what was its inaugural winner?
8. Which three films have won the Big 5 at the Academy Awards? (namely Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay or Best Adapted Screenplay)
9. Name the two actresses who sensationally tied for the Best Actress Award at the 1969 awards ceremony?
10. Which two actors have won posthumous Oscars and for what films?
11. What was the first colour film to win the Best Picture Oscar?
12. What is the only X-rated movie to date to win the Best Picture Oscar?
13. Which Irish actor has the unique distinction of having been nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for the very same film?
14. Which two films have the dubious distinction of having received 11 nominations in all categories without registering a single win?
15. What director has the distinction of having directed his father to a Best Supporting Actor Oscar and his daughter to a Best Supporting Actress Oscar?
16. For which five films did Alfred Hitchcock receive a Best Director nomination? (incredibly, he never actually won this award)
17. Who is the youngest person to ever win a competitive Oscar and for what film?
18. What was the first animated feature film to be nominated in the Best Picture category?
19. Brother and sister Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine have both won Oscars during the course of their respective careers. Name the categories in which they won and for what film.
20. Which actor won a Best Actor Oscar at the same ceremony which he also co-hosted?
21. Which actor has won the most Best Actor awards and for what films?
22. For which film did Martin Scorsese finally receive a long-overdue Oscar for Best Director?
23. Who is the only woman – to date – to have received the Academy Award for Best Director and name the film in question.
24. Which actors have won back-to-back Best Actor Oscars and for what films?
25. Which directors have won back-to-back Best Director Oscars and for what films?
And the Oscar goes to….(The Answers)
1. Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) won 11 Oscars each.
2. John Ford holds this record with four wins in total – the films in question are The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952).
3. With four wins for Best Actress, Katharine Hepburn holds this particular record. She won for 1933’s Morning Glory, 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1968’s The Lion in Winter and 1981’s On Golden Pond.
4. Marlon Brando declined to accept his Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather.
5. Italian director Federico Fellini has won the most Best Foreign Language Film Oscars – the films respectively are 1956’s La Strada, 1957’s Nights of Cabiria, 1963’s 8-and-a-half and 1974’s Amarcord. He also received an Honorary Academy Award in 1992.
6. Wings (1927), Grand Hotel (1932), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Argo (2012) and Green Book (2018) all won the biggest prize of Oscar night, but alas their directors were not even shortlisted for Best Director.
7. Shrek was the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.
8. Only three films – to date – have won the Big Five Oscars. They are 1934’s It Happened One Night, 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs.
9. Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand tied for Best Actress at the 41st Academy Awards ceremony. Hepburn won for The Lion in Winter; Streisand won for Funny Girl.
10. Peter Finch won a posthumous Best Actor Oscar for Network at the 49th Academy Awards. Heath Ledger won a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Dark Knight at the 81st Academy Awards.
11. That small civil war movie called Gone with the Wind (1939) was the first colour film to win Best Picture.
12. 1969’s Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film to have won Best Picture.
13. William Joseph Shields – better known to us all as Barry Fitzgerald – was nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for 1944’s Going My Way. He won Best Supporting Actor whilst his co-star Bing Crosby won Best Actor. The Academy rules were subsequently changed to prevent such a recurrence.
14. 1977’s The Turning Point and 1985’s The Color Purple both received 11 nominations, but both went home from the ceremony empty-handed.
15. The great John Huston has the unique distinction of having directed both his father – Walter – and his daughter – Anjelica – to Best Supporting Acting Oscars. Walter won for 1948’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; Anjelica won for 1985’s Prizzi’s Honor.
16. Hitchcock never won a Best Director Oscar during his remarkable career. His five nominations came for 1940’s Rebecca, 1944’s Lifeboat, 1945’s Spellbound, 1954’s Rear Window and 1960’s Psycho.
17. At age 10, Tatum O’Neal won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1973’s Paper Moon which co-starred her real-life father Ryan O’Neal.
18. Disney’s 1991 animated adaptation of Beauty and the Beast became the first animated feature film to be nominated for Best Picture in 1992.
19. Warren Beatty won the Best Director Oscar for his 1981 epic-historical film Reds; Shirley MacLaine won Best Actress two years later for Terms of Endearment. Both films, incidentally, featured Jack Nicholson in a supporting role.
20. David Niven won the Best Actor Oscar for Separate Tables at the 31st Academy Awards. He also served as one of the co-hosts on the very same evening.
21. With wins for 1989’s My Left Foot, 2007’s There Will Be Blood and 2012’s Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis currently holds the record here with three golden statuettes for Best Actor.
22. Martin Scorsese was finally awarded the Best Director Oscar for 2006’s The Departed.
23. Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman – to date – to have won the Best Director Oscar. She won for 2008’s The Hurt Locker which also won Best Picture.
24. Spencer Tracy won back-to-back Best Actor Oscars for 1937’s Captains Courageous and 1938’s Boys Town. Tom Hanks repeated the feat in the 1990s when he won for 1993’s Philadelphia and 1994’s Forrest Gump.
25. Three directors have managed to win back-to-back Best Director Oscars. They are John Ford (1940’s The Grapes of Wrath and 1941’s How Green Was My Valley), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1950’s A Letter to Three Wives and 1951’s All About Eve) and – more recently – Alejandro G. Inarritu (2014’s Birdman and 2015’s The Revenant).