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60 free Braveheart trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
47 free Braveheart trivia questions with answers. Braveheart won five Oscars, sent tourists flooding to Stirling and was voted the worst Best Picture winner ever by the same magazine that had called it the best film of 1995. This quiz covers the whole story: how Randall Wallace's script escaped MGM, why Terry Gilliam turned it down and Brad Pitt was nearly the lead, the 1,600 Irish army reservists who played both armies, James Horner's score, the NC-17 fight, the box office and the awards. It then turns to what the film got wrong (the kilts, jus primae noctis, a Stirling Bridge with no bridge, an Isabella who was a child in France) and to the real William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and Edward Longshanks, right down to who betrayed Wallace at Robroyston and where Bruce's heart is buried. Easy questions open it and the last stretch is for people who know their schiltrons. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry on the film, the battle or the person, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01Which studio distributed Braveheart in the United States and Canada?
Paramount
It financed a third of the budget for those rights; Fox put up the rest for the international release.
Q 02Who wrote the Braveheart screenplay, sharing a surname with its hero?
Randall Wallace
He went on to direct The Man in the Iron Mask and We Were Soldiers, and won the Writers Guild award for the script.
Q 03Which 15th-century epic poem was the film's main inspiration?
Blind Harry's The Wallace
Historians do not treat it as reliable: it also claims Wallace was seven feet tall.
Q 04Which French actress plays Princess Isabelle?
Sophie Marceau
The real Isabella was a child living in France at the time of Falkirk and did not marry Edward II until he was already king.
Q 05Which actor, once the star of The Prisoner, plays Edward Longshanks?
Patrick McGoohan
The real Edward I was a devoted husband to Eleanor of Castile and died almost two years after Wallace, not on the same day.
Q 06Who plays Wallace's secretly wed bride, Murron MacClannough?
Catherine McCormack
Blind Harry gave the wife the name Marion Braidfute; the film's account of her death setting off the rebellion comes from the poem.
Q 07Which Scottish actor plays Robert the Bruce?
Angus Macfadyen
He returned to the part 24 years later in the 2019 legacy sequel that carries the character's name.
Q 08Which Irish actor plays Wallace's giant childhood friend Hamish?
Brendan Gleeson
David O'Hara plays Stephen, the Irishman who claims to talk to God, and Brian Cox is Wallace's uncle Argyle.
Q 09Which studio put up two-thirds of the budget in exchange for foreign distribution rights?
20th Century Fox
Warner Bros. had offered to fund it only if Gibson signed for another Lethal Weapon sequel, which he refused; Paramount took North America for a third of the cost.
Q 10Which director was offered Braveheart before Gibson and turned it down?
Terry Gilliam
Producer Alan Ladd Jr. carried the script out of MGM when the studio changed management in 1993.
Q 11Which actor did Gibson consider for the lead when he planned only to direct?
Brad Pitt
Gibson thought he was too old for the part but agreed to star to secure the financing.
Q 12Most of the shoot moved from the UK to which country after it offered 1,600 army reservists as extras?
Ireland
The reservists were allowed to grow beards, and to save money the same extras played both the Scottish and English armies.
Q 13Gibson and editor Steven Rosenblum's first cut ran 195 minutes; who asked them to trim it to 177?
Sherry Lansing of Paramount
Gibson has said a four-hour version exists and he would reassemble it if both studios were interested.
Q 21A 2005 Empire magazine poll ranked Braveheart number one on which list?
Worst Pictures to Win Best Picture Oscar
Empire readers had earlier voted it the best film of 1995, so the magazine's own audience changed its mind.
Q 22Attendance at the Stirling Castle conference jumped from 66,000 to how many in 1996, the year after release?
167,000
Later research found 55 percent of visitors to the Stirling area had seen the film.
Q 23What happened to the 1997 sandstone statue of Gibson-as-Wallace placed at the Wallace Monument car park?
It was vandalised, caged nightly, then removed in 2008
Q 14What rating did Gibson have to tone the battle scenes down to avoid?
NC-17 (adults only)
The final version got an R for 'brutal medieval warfare'.
Q 15Who composed the score, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra?
James Horner
It was the second of his three collaborations with Gibson as director, after The Man Without a Face, and became one of the best-selling soundtracks ever.
Q 16At which event did Braveheart premiere on May 18, 1995?
Seattle International Film Festival
It went wide in US cinemas six days later; the European premiere was in Stirling that September.
Q 17Roughly how much did Braveheart gross worldwide?
$209 million
Only $75.5 million of that came from the US and Canada; it spent nine non-consecutive weeks in the domestic top ten.
Q 18How many Academy Awards did Braveheart win from its ten nominations?
Five
Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, Sound Effects Editing and Makeup; it was the ninth Best Picture winner with no acting nominations.
Q 19Which win first made Braveheart look like a serious Oscar contender during the 1995 awards season?
Golden Globe for Best Director
Until then Apollo 13, Sense and Sensibility and The Usual Suspects were seen as the frontrunners.
Q 20Which is NOT one of the four Best Picture winners never nominated for the SAG cast award?
Spotlight
Spotlight actually won the SAG ensemble prize on its way to Best Picture in 2016.
Sculptor Tom Church put 'Braveheart' on the shield; after a hammer attack on the face the nightly cage made it look imprisoned, and it was described as among the most loathed public art in Scotland.
Q 24Historian Sharon Krossa's first complaint about Braveheart is that the Scots wear what, unknown before the 16th century?
Belted plaid
She likened it to a colonial America film with men in 20th-century business suits worn back to front.
Q 25Which supposed feudal right, invoked by Longshanks in the film, do medieval scholars regard as a myth?
Jus primae noctis
Practically no writer claiming the 'first night' right has ever cited a trustworthy source for it.
Q 26The film's version of the Scots' 1297 victory near Stirling omits which key feature?
The bridge
Also absent is Andrew Moray, joint commander of the Scots, who was fatally wounded there.
Q 27The film's 'Irish conscripts' at Falkirk are invented; much of Edward's real army was what?
Welsh
Of the 25,781 foot soldiers paid two days before the battle, more than half would have been Welsh, and Edward had put down a Welsh mutiny on the march.
Q 28Braveheart gives Robert the Bruce's father which affliction, which the real Robert allegedly had late in life?
Leprosy
His real title before he was king was Earl of Carrick, not 'Earl of Bruce', and he had been fighting a guerrilla war for eight years before Bannockburn.
Q 29How many years after Wallace's execution was Edward III, whom the film implies is his son, actually born?
Seven
Isabella did later depose Edward II with her lover Roger Mortimer, but not until 1326.
Q 30The film's depiction of Prince Edward as effeminate and weak drew accusations of what against Gibson?
Homophobia
Gibson said Longshanks throwing the prince's lover Phillip out of a window 'has nothing to do with him being gay' and that the king is simply a psychopath.