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60 free Alfred Hitchcock trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Alfred Hitchcock directed more than 50 feature films across six decades, hosted his own television show and put himself in the corner of nearly every picture he made. This Alfred Hitchcock trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers that span all of it: the silent films and the first British talkie, the Selznick years and Rebecca, the run from Rear Window to The Birds, the late films, and the man himself, from his childhood above a greengrocer's shop to his knighthood four months before he died. It is written for people who have seen the big ones and want to find out how deep their knowledge goes: who wrote the novels, who scored the films, which stars he used four times, what the MacGuffin is and where the term came from. Difficulty climbs from questions any film fan can answer to ones only Hitchcock obsessives will get. Every answer was checked against Hitchcock's Wikipedia biography, which draws on the standard biographies by Spoto, McGilligan and Taylor and on his book-length interview with Truffaut, and each question links to the page that establishes it.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Alfred Hitchcock was born above his father's shop in Leytonstone in 1899. What did the shop sell?
Fruit and vegetables
His father was a greengrocer and poulterer, as his grandfather had been; the family later ran a fish-and-chip shop and a fishmonger's in Limehouse.
Q 02Per Hitchcock's favourite childhood story, what did a policeman do to him at five on his father's instructions?
Locked him in a cell for a few minutes
He said it left him with a lifelong fear of the police, so strong that he refused to drive in case he got a parking ticket.
Q 03Hitchcock entered the film industry in 1919 doing what job?
Designing title cards
He sent drawings to the London studio of Famous Players-Lasky, Paramount's production arm, and was hired.
Q 04What was Hitchcock's directorial debut, a British-German silent film shot near Munich in 1925?
The Pleasure Garden
His film stock was confiscated at the Brenner Pass because he failed to declare it, and he had to borrow money from the actors to finish.
Q 05Which 1927 film was Hitchcock's first hit and the site of his first cameo, sitting in a newsroom?
The Lodger
He wanted the star, matinee idol Ivor Novello, to be guilty, but the star system would not allow it.
Q 06Which Hitchcock film is credited as the first British "talkie"?
Blackmail (1929)
His tenth film, it was made when British International Pictures converted its Elstree studios to sound.
Q 07Whom did Hitchcock marry at the Brompton Oratory in December 1926?
Alma Reville
She had been the editor and script girl on Woman to Woman and went on to write or co-write on The 39 Steps, Suspicion and Shadow of a Doubt.
Q 08What was the name of the Hitchcocks' only child, born in 1928?
Patricia
Pat Hitchcock became an actress and appeared in Stage Fright, Strangers on a Train and Psycho.
Q 09Which English screenwriter and Hitchcock collaborator coined the term "MacGuffin"?
Angus MacPhail
The MacGuffin is the object everyone chases that has no real narrative value; in The 39 Steps it is a stolen set of design plans.
Q 10What is the MacGuffin in The 39 Steps?
A stolen set of design plans
The device recurred throughout his career; in Notorious it was a radioactive element, which briefly got Hitchcock placed under FBI surveillance.
Q 11Which actress from The 39 Steps is described as the quintessential English 'Hitchcock blonde'?
Madeleine Carroll
She also starred with John Gielgud in Secret Agent, with Peter Lorre as a deranged assistant.
Q 12Which Hollywood producer signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract in 1939 and brought him to America?
David O. Selznick
Selznick later sold Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and a Ben Hecht script to RKO as a package for $500,000 to cover overruns on Duel in the Sun.
Q 13What was Hitchcock's last British film before leaving for Hollywood, produced by Charles Laughton?
Jamaica Inn
Q 21Which author wrote the novel Strangers on a Train, filmed by Hitchcock in 1951?
Patricia Highsmith
Farley Granger played the innocent victim of the swap-murder scheme and Robert Walker, known for boy-next-door parts, the villain.
Q 22Which Hitchcock film did he shoot in 3D?
Dial M for Murder
Ray Milland plays a husband trying to murder his wife for her money; the 3D craze had faded by the time it was released.
Q 23On which real photographer was James Stewart's wheelchair-bound character in Rear Window based?
Robert Capa
Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr co-starred; nearly the whole film takes place in one studio apartment.
He had signed on to make it in May 1938, right before his first trip to the United States.
Q 14Which Hitchcock film won the Academy Award for Best Picture?
Rebecca
His first American film was nominated for eleven Oscars; the award went to producer Selznick, and Hitchcock lost Best Director.
Q 15Which novelist wrote both the novel behind Hitchcock's Best Picture winner and the story behind The Birds?
Daphne du Maurier
She also wrote Jamaica Inn; Hitchcock had republished "The Birds" in his 1959 anthology My Favorites in Suspense.
Q 16How many times was Hitchcock nominated for the Best Director Oscar, without ever winning?
Five
His films collected 46 Academy Award nominations and six wins, but never one for him as director.
Q 17Which actress won the Best Actress Oscar for the Hitchcock film Suspicion?
Joan Fontaine
Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant's character to be guilty, but as with Ivor Novello in The Lodger, the star could not be the villain.
Q 18Which Hitchcock film did he name as his personal favourite, praising that it was shot in a real town?
Shadow of a Doubt
Written by Thornton Wilder, it was filmed in Santa Rosa, California; it is one of nine Hitchcock films in the National Film Registry.
Q 19Which surrealist painter designed the dream sequence in Spellbound?
Salvador Dalí
The 1945 film, starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, was built around psychoanalysis.
Q 20Notorious used which substance as its plot device, earning Hitchcock brief FBI surveillance?
Uranium
He and screenwriter Ben Hecht had consulted physicist Robert Millikan at Caltech about an atomic bomb around March 1945, months before Hiroshima.
Q 24Which actress starred in three consecutive Hitchcock films in 1954-55, including Rear Window?
Grace Kelly
She retired to become Princess of Monaco in 1956 and was announced for Marnie in 1962 before withdrawing.
Q 25Where is To Catch a Thief set?
The French Riviera
Cary Grant plays retired thief John Robie, prime suspect in a spate of robberies.
Q 26Which of his own films did Hitchcock remake in 1956, this time with James Stewart and Doris Day?
The Man Who Knew Too Much
James Stewart played the father this time, and the theme song Doris Day sang won an Oscar.
Q 27Which song from a Hitchcock film won the Academy Award for Best Original Song?
Que Sera, Sera
Doris Day sang it in the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much.
Q 28Which Hitchcock film was the only one to star Henry Fonda, as a musician mistaken for a robber?
The Wrong Man
Fonda plays a Stork Club musician; Vera Miles plays the wife who collapses under the strain.
Q 29What phobia does James Stewart's character Scottie suffer from in Vertigo?
Acrophobia, a fear of heights
He is a former police investigator who becomes obsessed with the woman he is hired to follow, played by Kim Novak.
Q 30Which film did Vertigo displace at the top of the BFI critics' poll in 2012?
Citizen Kane
Vertigo had finished just behind it in the 2002 Sight & Sound poll.