Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Jean Cocteau trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Jean Cocteau trivia quiz covers a man who refused to be one thing. Poet, playwright, novelist, draughtsman, designer and filmmaker, he insisted on calling all of it poetry, and the quiz follows him through every form. It starts with the essentials: where he was born, what he called himself, the ballet he wrote for Diaghilev with Picasso's sets and Satie's score, the six composers he championed, and the bar named Le Boeuf sur le Toit. Then it moves through the friendship with the doomed young novelist Raymond Radiguet, the opium years, the novel written in a week during withdrawal, and the plays that made his name in the 1930s. The second half is the cinema and the private life. The Blood of a Poet financed by a viscount, the human-armed candelabra of Beauty and the Beast, the mirror and the Rolls-Royce of Orpheus, the last film with Picasso and Yul Brynner, and the actor Jean Marais who was both muse and star. It closes with the wartime controversy, the Académie française, the chapel he decorated, the death that came a day after Édith Piaf's, and the three words on his gravestone. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Cocteau and his major works and collaborators, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where was Cocteau born in 1889?
Maisons-Laffitte
His father, a lawyer and amateur painter, died by suicide when Jean was nine.
Q 02What nickname, from a volume he published at 22, did bohemian Paris give young Cocteau?
The Frivolous Prince
He had published his first poems, Aladdin's Lamp, at nineteen and left home at fifteen.
Q 03What did Cocteau do during the First World War?
Drove an ambulance for the Red Cross
It was then that he met Apollinaire, Picasso and Modigliani.
Q 04Which impresario persuaded Cocteau to write the scenario for the ballet Parade?
Sergei Diaghilev
The Ballets Russes had already staged Le Dieu bleu, which Cocteau made with Bakst in 1912.
Q 05Who designed the sets and costumes for Parade in 1917?
Pablo Picasso
Erik Satie wrote the music; the premiere was at the Théâtre du Châtelet on 18 May 1917.
Q 06Which everyday objects did Cocteau add to Satie's score for Parade as noise-makers?
A typewriter, foghorn and milk bottles
A pistol was in the mix too, somewhat to Satie's dismay.
Q 07Which uniformed friend did Cocteau credit with saving Parade's makers from angry women?
Guillaume Apollinaire
With his shaved skull, scar and head bandage, the poet's presence, Cocteau said, stopped the audience gouging their eyes out with hairpins.
Q 08Which group of composers did Cocteau champion in the 1920s?
Les Six
The name came from two 1920 articles by the critic Henri Collet.
Q 09Which member of the group Cocteau championed was Swiss rather than French?
Arthur Honegger
The others were Auric, Durey, Milhaud, Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre.
Q 10What was the name of the wildly popular 1920s bar that Cocteau helped christen?
Le Boeuf sur le Toit
The presence of Cocteau and his composer friends was a big part of the draw.
Q 11Which young writer did Cocteau meet in 1918 and promote tirelessly?
Raymond Radiguet
He arranged the publication of the young man's first novel and used his influence to win it a prize.
Q 12What was the title of Radiguet's autobiographical novel of adultery that Cocteau got published?
Le Diable au corps
It won the Nouveau Monde prize; the other titles are Cocteau's own novels.
Q 13How did Radiguet die in 1923?
Typhoid fever, aged 20
His second novel, Le Bal du comte d'Orgel, appeared posthumously.
Q 21Cocteau's neo-Jules Verne reportage for Paris-Soir recounted a journey of what kind?
Around the world in 80 days
Mon Premier Voyage was one of two volumes of journalism he published in the 1930s.
Q 22Which nobleman financed Cocteau's first film, The Blood of a Poet?
Charles de Noailles
The Vicomte's money also funded Buñuel's L'Age d'Or; the film was made in 1930 and shown in 1932.
Q 23Which famous photographer made her only film appearance in The Blood of a Poet?
Lee Miller
The film also features the aerialist Barbette.
Q 14What did Cocteau do immediately after Radiguet's death, rather than attend the funeral?
Left for Monte Carlo with Diaghilev
He went to see the Ballets Russes perform Les noces; he generally avoided funerals.
Q 15To which drug did Cocteau become addicted in the 1920s?
Opium
He blamed a chance meeting with Louis Laloy of the Monte Carlo Opera, and later published a diary of his cure.
Q 16How quickly did Cocteau write Les Enfants Terribles?
In a week
He wrote it during a strenuous drug withdrawal; the novel appeared in 1929.
Q 17Which Catholic philosopher supported Cocteau through his 1929 recovery?
Jacques Maritain
Under his influence Cocteau briefly returned to the sacraments and co-founded the magazine Le Roseau d'Or.
Q 18Cocteau wrote the libretto for which Stravinsky opera-oratorio, premiered in 1927?
Oedipus rex
It was first performed at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris on 30 May 1927.
Q 19Cocteau's 1934 play La Machine infernale retells which legend?
Oedipus
It is considered his greatest work for the theatre.
Q 20Cocteau's play La Voix humaine became a 1958 opera by which composer?
Francis Poulenc
The 40-minute one-act work for soprano was prepared with Denise Duval.
Q 24Which three films make up Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy?
Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, Testament of Orpheus
They span thirty years, from 1930 to 1960.
Q 25Who played the Beast in Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast?
Jean Marais
Josette Day played Belle; the story came from Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 1756 tale.
Q 26In Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, what guides Belle's father through the castle?
An enchanted candelabra
It leads him to a laden dinner table, where he falls asleep; picking a rose is what dooms him.
Q 27Who was the cinematographer of Beauty and the Beast?
Henri Alekan
Christian Bérard handled the production design and Georges Auric the score.
Q 28Which composer turned Beauty and the Beast into an opera in 1994?
Philip Glass
Glass also based an opera on Les Enfants Terribles.
Q 29In Cocteau's Orpheus, how do the Princess and her motorcyclists pass into the underworld?
Through a mirror
The film transposes the Greek myth to contemporary Paris, with poetry crackling over a car radio.
Q 30What make of car does the Princess drive in Orpheus?
Rolls-Royce
Orpheus stores it in his garage after inviting the chauffeur Heurtebise to stay.