Eyes Wide Shut
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Eyes Wide Shut trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Eyes Wide Shut was Stanley Kubrick's last movie and one of his most argued over. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, married at the time, play a Manhattan couple whose comfortable life is shaken by a single late-night admission, which sends the husband on a strange walk through the city and into a masked gathering he was never meant to see. Kubrick died days after showing his cut, and people have debated the result ever since. This quiz covers the whole story of the picture. There are questions on the plot and its characters, on the actors who appear and the ones who were replaced or nearly cast, on the famously drawn-out production, on the music, on how the American release was altered to get its rating, and on the novella Kubrick spent decades wanting to adapt. It is written for Kubrick fans, for anyone who has just watched the movie and wants to test what they caught, and for quiz hosts building a round on Tom Cruise or on the movies of the 1990s. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess leaves you with a good story.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which word, also the title of an opera, gets Bill Harford through the mansion gates in Eyes Wide Shut?
Fidelio
Fidelio, Beethoven's only opera, is named for the disguise a wife takes to free her jailed husband. A tale of marital loyalty opens the door to a night of temptation.
Q 02Which Australian star secretly dubbed the masked woman who warns Bill Harford at the mansion in Eyes Wide Shut?
Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett recorded the lines after Kubrick's death because the actress on screen could not manage a convincing American accent. Cruise and Kidman suggested her, and it stayed quiet until 2019.
Q 03Stanley Kubrick coined the surname Harford in Eyes Wide Shut as a nod to which Hollywood leading man?
Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford was the type Kubrick pictured for Bill, so he folded the star's name into Harford. The part itself went to Tom Cruise.
Q 04Eyes Wide Shut, planned as a three-month job, holds which Guinness World Record?
Longest continuous film shoot
Longest continuous film shoot is the record: more than 15 months in all, with 46 weeks of it unbroken. One shot of Tom Cruise walking through a door ran to 95 takes.
Q 05Eyes Wide Shut swaps the novella's Carnival season for which holiday, even though the film opened in summer?
Christmas
Christmas trees stand in nearly every set except the mansion, and their lights gave Kubrick a glow to film by. One critic called it the Christmas movie of 1999.
Q 06Which English stately home supplied interiors for the masked ritual in Eyes Wide Shut?
Highclere Castle
Highclere Castle, later television's Downton Abbey, shared the job with two other houses: Elveden Hall gave more interiors and Mentmore Towers the exterior. On screen the three merge into one estate called Somerton.
Q 07In Eyes Wide Shut, Alice Harford stuns her husband by confessing a vacation fantasy about which stranger?
A naval officer
A naval officer she merely saw on vacation was enough for Alice to consider leaving Bill and their daughter. Her confession is what sends him wandering the city all night.
Q 08How was a recorded Orthodox liturgy treated to create the eerie chant over the masked ritual in Eyes Wide Shut?
Played backwards
Played backwards, a Romanian church service became a track called Backwards Priests, which a choreographer used in rehearsal. Kubrick heard it and phoned the composer to ask for more.
Q 09Eyes Wide Shut ended a twelve-year silence from Stanley Kubrick, who had last released which film?
Full Metal Jacket
Full Metal Jacket came out in 1987, and Kubrick then spent years researching a Holocaust film called Aryan Papers. He dropped it once Schindler's List covered similar ground.
Q 10Which Oscar-winning director took over as Victor Ziegler in Eyes Wide Shut after the first actor walked away?
Sydney Pollack
Sydney Pollack, who won his Oscars for Out of Africa, replaced Harvey Keitel after Keitel's scenes as Ziegler were already filmed. He had directed Tom Cruise in The Firm a few years earlier.
Q 11In Eyes Wide Shut, Victor Ziegler calls Bill Harford upstairs during the party to treat a young woman for what?
A drug overdose
A drug overdose has felled Mandy in Ziegler's bathroom, and Bill stabilises her. Later he reads in a newspaper that another one has killed her.
Q 12Stanley Kubrick's reported fear of what kept Eyes Wide Shut in Britain, with Manhattan rebuilt on soundstages?
Flying
Flying was out for Kubrick even though he had earned a pilot's licence as a young man. Only some background footage was filmed in the real New York and projected behind Tom Cruise.
Q 13Stanley Kubrick died of what cause days after screening his cut of Eyes Wide Shut for Cruise and Kidman?
A heart attack
Q 21In Eyes Wide Shut, pianist Nick Nightingale says he must perform his late-night mansion gigs under what condition?
Blindfolded
Blindfolded at the keyboard, Nick never sees his employers, yet he promises Bill that beautiful women will be there. The next day a hotel clerk says two men took him away.
Q 22Where does Bill Harford find the mask that went missing from his rented costume near the end of Eyes Wide Shut?
On his pillow
On his pillow, beside his sleeping wife, lies the mask he wore to the mansion. The sight breaks him, and he tells Alice everything.
Q 23Where had Bill Harford first known pianist Nick Nightingale before their reunion at Ziegler's party in Eyes Wide Shut?
Medical school
A heart attack killed Kubrick in his sleep at 70, at his Hertfordshire manor. The film opened four months later, after editors had finished the remaining technical work without him.
Q 14What are Bill and Alice Harford smoking when their talk turns to jealousy and unfulfilled desire in Eyes Wide Shut?
Marijuana
Marijuana loosens Alice's tongue the night after Ziegler's party, and Bill's claim that women are naturally faithful sets her off. Her answer is the confession that drives the plot.
Q 15Which Manhattan neighbourhood did Stanley Kubrick rebuild in detail on a British studio lot for Eyes Wide Shut?
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village was rebuilt down to its newspaper vending machines after designers were sent to Manhattan to measure the street widths. A real London street, Hatton Garden, doubled for one more block.
Q 16Which European capital is the setting of the 1926 novella that Eyes Wide Shut transplants to modern New York?
Vienna
Vienna in the early 1900s is home to the novella's couple, a physician and his wife. Kubrick bought the film rights in the 1960s and waited three decades to make it.
Q 17Eyes Wide Shut adapts a 1926 novella by which dramatist, who had qualified in medicine before turning to writing?
Arthur Schnitzler
Arthur Schnitzler called the story Traumnovelle, and it first ran as a magazine serial in the mid-1920s. English editions carry the title Dream Story.
Q 18Which London store stood in for a famous New York one in the closing scene of Eyes Wide Shut?
Hamleys
Hamleys, the Regent Street toy shop founded in 1760, plays New York's FAO Schwarz in the last scene, in which the Harfords take their daughter shopping and decide how to carry on.
Q 19Which singer's CD did Nicole Kidman bring to the Eyes Wide Shut set, landing one of his songs in the film?
Chris Isaak
Chris Isaak's Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing reached the film because Kubrick let a nervous Kidman choose music for her nude scenes. He liked it enough to put it in the trailer too.
Q 20Which comedian did Stanley Kubrick picture in the lead when he first imagined Eyes Wide Shut as a sex comedy?
Steve Martin
Steve Martin and Woody Allen were both on Kubrick's mind in the 1970s, when he saw the story as a wild, sombre comedy. Tom Hanks and Bill Murray made his list in the 1980s.
Medical school is where the two were classmates, until Nick dropped out and turned to playing piano for a living. Ziegler later claims Nick is safely back home in Seattle.
Q 24Which name, shared with a style of carnival mask, belongs to the prostitute Bill Harford meets in Eyes Wide Shut?
Domino
Domino is a small eye mask worn with a black cloak at carnival, and masks decorate her apartment too. In the novella the same character is called Mizzi.
Q 25What nationality is the older guest who tries to seduce Alice at Ziegler's party in Eyes Wide Shut?
Hungarian
Hungarian and persistent, Szavost works on Alice while two young models try the same on Bill elsewhere in the house. Bill is pulled away by an emergency upstairs.
Q 26Which actress filmed her scenes as Marion in Eyes Wide Shut, then was replaced when retakes clashed with another film?
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Jennifer Jason Leigh was busy on David Cronenberg's eXistenZ when Kubrick wanted her back, so Marie Richardson replayed the grieving daughter who declares her love for Bill.
Q 27Which actor, later an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, plays pianist Nick Nightingale in Eyes Wide Shut?
Todd Field
Todd Field, later the director of In the Bedroom and Tár, got the part because Kubrick admired him in the indie film Ruby in Paradise. He counted Kubrick as a mentor when he moved behind the camera.
Q 28Which Scottish actor auditioned six times to play the flirtatious hotel desk clerk in Eyes Wide Shut?
Alan Cumming
Alan Cumming went through six auditions for a small role, the clerk who tells Bill that two men led Nick Nightingale away.
Q 29Which teenage star of the late 1990s plays the costume dealer's daughter in Eyes Wide Shut?
Leelee Sobieski
Leelee Sobieski, also seen in Deep Impact and Never Been Kissed, plays the girl Milich catches with two older men in his shop at night. By the next day he is offering her services to Bill.
Q 30Which 1990s sitcom star plays Carl, the fiancé of the grieving Marion, in Eyes Wide Shut?
Thomas Gibson
Thomas Gibson, the Greg of Dharma & Greg, had made his film debut beside Cruise and Kidman in Far and Away before Kubrick cast him as Carl. He later led Criminal Minds for more than a decade.