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50 free Jack Nicholson trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Jack Nicholson trivia quiz follows the New Jersey class clown who found out at 37 that his sister was his mother, through the Roger Corman years and the screenwriting detour to the lucky break of Easy Rider. The film questions cover Five Easy Pieces and the chicken-salad scene, Carnal Knowledge, The Last Detail, Jake Gittes in Chinatown, Randle McMurphy, Antonioni's The Passenger, the improvised 'Here's Johnny!', Terms of Endearment, Prizzi's Honor, the Joker deal worth up to $90 million, Colonel Jessup, Melvin Udall, About Schmidt, The Departed and the quiet retirement after How Do You Know. The rest is the man off screen: the Air National Guard, Hanna-Barbera's job offer, the Napoleon film Kubrick never made and Nicholson never gave up on, Brando next door on 'Bad Boy Drive', the golf-club road-rage incident, six children by five women, the Lakers courtside seat, the art collection, and the fishing spider named after him. He is the most Oscar-nominated male actor in history, and this quiz explains why. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Stanley Kubrick and Marlon Brando quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which state was Jack Nicholson born and raised?
New Jersey
He grew up in Neptune City and was voted 'Class Clown' by Manasquan High School's Class of 1954 after a year of daily detention.
Q 02In 1974, Time researchers told Nicholson his supposed sister was actually his what?
His mother
June was 19 and unmarried, so her parents raised him as their own; he called the discovery dramatic 'but not traumatizing'.
Q 03Which two animation directors offered the teenage Nicholson an animator's job?
William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
He was working as an office boy at the MGM cartoon studio and told them he wanted to act.
Q 04Nicholson considers May 5, 1955 lucky because 5 was the shirt number of which boyhood idol?
Joe DiMaggio
He remains a Yankees fan and a Lakers courtside fixture.
Q 05Nicholson made his film debut in the title role of which 1958 Roger Corman teen drama?
The Cry Baby Killer
He worked with Corman for a decade, including as the masochistic dental patient in The Little Shop of Horrors.
Q 06In which branch did Nicholson serve as a firefighter, a move he called an effort to 'dodge the draft'?
California Air National Guard
He was called up for months of active duty during the 1961 Berlin Crisis.
Q 07Nicholson co-wrote which 1968 film vehicle for The Monkees?
Head
He also arranged its soundtrack; his script for The Trip had starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.
Q 08For which actor was the Easy Rider role of lawyer George Hanson originally written?
Rip Torn
Torn quit after an argument with Dennis Hopper; the $400,000 film grossed $60 million and earned Nicholson his first Oscar nomination.
Q 09Kubrick cast Nicholson as which historical figure in a film that was never completed?
Napoleon
Nicholson called his own failure to make a Napoleon film 'perhaps the greatest frustration of his career'.
Q 10What was the name of Nicholson's oil-rig worker in Five Easy Pieces (1970)?
Bobby Dupea
Co-star Karen Black said the famous restaurant scene was partly improvised and out of character for Bobby.
Q 11Nicholson's agent turned down which 1972 film when John Boorman refused to meet his price?
Deliverance
The same year, most of his performance in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever ended up on the cutting-room floor.
Q 12On Carnal Knowledge (1971), Nicholson began a lifelong friendship with which musician co-star?
Art Garfunkel
Garfunkel stayed in a room Nicholson jokingly called 'the Arthur Garfunkel Suite'.
Q 13For which 1973 Hal Ashby film did Nicholson win Best Actor at Cannes?
The Last Detail
He plays a Navy man escorting a prisoner, in a scene often censored, slapping his gun on a bar and yelling that he is the Shore Patrol.
Q 21Which famous line in The Shining did Nicholson improvise?
'Here's Johnny!'
He also improvised the scene where he explodes at his wife for interrupting his writing, and slept short hours to stay agitated.
Q 22Who wanted more of an "everyman" than Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining, and lost the argument to Kubrick?
Stephen King
Kubrick called Nicholson's acting 'on a par with the greatest stars of the past, like Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Cagney'.
Q 23Nicholson won his second Oscar playing retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove in which film?
Terms of Endearment
Q 14What is the name of the private detective Nicholson plays in Chinatown (1974)?
Jake Gittes
Roger Ebert said that 'as Jake Gittes, he stepped into Bogart's shoes'.
Q 15After the Manson murder of Sharon Tate, Nicholson began sleeping with what under his pillow?
A hammer
He also took breaks from work to attend the Manson trial.
Q 16Which future co-star was at Nicholson's house in 1977 when Polanski photographed Samantha Geimer?
Anjelica Huston
Nicholson was out of town filming; Huston had dropped by to collect belongings after they had broken up.
Q 17What is the name of Nicholson's character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?
Randle P. McMurphy
Milos Forman let him improvise most of the group-therapy scenes; the film won five Oscars including his first for Best Actor.
Q 18Which future star, raised in the same area as Nicholson, played a patient in Cuckoo's Nest?
Danny DeVito
They discovered afterwards they had grown up in the same area and knew many of the same people.
Q 19In The Passenger (1975), Nicholson's journalist assumes the identity of a dead man who turns out to be what?
A weapons smuggler
Nicholson thought so highly of the film that he bought the world rights.
Q 20Nicholson took an unsympathetic role in The Missouri Breaks (1976) specifically to work with which actor?
Marlon Brando
As a teenage theatre usher he had watched On the Waterfront about 40 times; Brando later lived next door on Mulholland Drive.
He and Shirley MacLaine played their scenes many different ways; a biographer described 'Jack floating like a butterfly'.
Q 24Which playwright did Nicholson play in Warren Beatty's Reds (1981)?
Eugene O'Neill
He identifies as Irish and compared himself to O'Neill: 'I am a writer, I am Irish, I have had problems with my family.'
Q 25Which director said Prizzi's Honor 'is composed largely of first takes' with Nicholson?
John Huston
Huston had acted opposite him as the villain of Chinatown a decade earlier.
Q 26Nicholson's share of the gross for playing the Joker in Batman (1989) was estimated at how much?
$60 million to $90 million
He called the performance 'a piece of pop art' and it was widely thought to overshadow Michael Keaton's Batman.
Q 27What was the name and rank of Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men (1992)?
Colonel Nathan R. Jessup
Rob Reiner said his full-out rehearsals told the other actors 'I better get on my game here because this guy's coming to play!'
Q 28For which two 1992 films did Nicholson receive Golden Raspberry nominations for Worst Actor?
Man Trouble and Hoffa
Hoffa simultaneously earned him a Golden Globe nomination; critic David Thomson called the film 'terribly neglected'.
Q 29In Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! (1996), Nicholson played which two roles?
The US President and a Las Vegas developer
President James Dale and Art Land; the film flopped.
Q 30What is the name of the obsessive-compulsive novelist Nicholson played in As Good as It Gets?
Melvin Udall
His third Oscar was matched by Helen Hunt's Best Actress win; the film grossed $314 million.