Kevin Costner
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50 free Kevin Costner trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Kevin Costner has been a film star for four decades. He played the incorruptible lawman in The Untouchables, the farmer who hears a voice in Field of Dreams and the soldier on the frontier in Dances With Wolves, the first film he directed, which won him Academy Awards as both director and producer. This quiz covers his whole story: the bit parts and lost scenes of his early years, the run of hits that made him one of Hollywood's leading men, the expensive gambles that followed, and his return on television as the head of a ranching family in Yellowstone. There are questions on his co-stars, his directors, the real people he has played and his life away from the set, from his band to his business ventures. It is written for film fans of every level. Most questions give you something to reason from, a few will test anyone who knows the films well, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Kevin Costner played Alex, the dead friend whose funeral reunites the cast, in which 1983 film that cut his scenes?
The Big Chill
The Big Chill shows Costner only as the body in the coffin during the opening titles. Its director felt so bad about the cut flashbacks that he gave Costner a part in his next film.
Q 02Which actor won an Oscar as the veteran Irish-American beat cop who mentors Kevin Costner's hero in The Untouchables?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery took Best Supporting Actor for the part, yet a 2003 Empire poll voted it the worst film accent of all, because his Scottish burr never went away.
Q 03Kevin Costner was first lined up to play the president in Air Force One, then personally offered the role to whom?
Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford took the part after Costner, the first choice to play the president, chose to concentrate on finishing The Postman. The film he gave away was a hit; the one he kept was a commercial disappointment.
Q 04Which pop superstar made her film acting debut opposite Kevin Costner in the 1992 thriller The Bodyguard?
Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston turned the film into a music phenomenon: its soundtrack became the best-selling soundtrack album of all time and won the Grammy for Album of the Year.
Q 05After The Bodyguard became a hit, Kevin Costner asked which real-life royal to star in a planned sequel?
Princess Diana
Princess Diana agreed to take the part, Costner has said. A draft of the screenplay was finished the day before she died in 1997, and the film was scrapped.
Q 06Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves beat which Martin Scorsese film to Best Picture at the 1991 Oscars?
Goodfellas
Goodfellas lost both Best Picture and Best Director to Costner's first film as a director. Dances With Wolves was the first western to take the top prize since Cimarron in 1931.
Q 07Which singer pretended to gag on camera after Kevin Costner mildly praised her concert in a 1991 tour documentary?
Madonna
Madonna kept the moment in her film Truth or Dare. Costner had come backstage after a Blond Ambition tour show, and she waited until he had left the room.
Q 08Kevin Costner bought a company in 1995 to develop machines, based on a government patent, that clean up what?
Oil spills
Oil spills were the target: the machines separate oil from water. They found few takers until the Gulf of Mexico disaster of 2010, when BP leased 32 of them.
Q 09Which real-life Prohibition agent did Kevin Costner play in the 1987 gangster film The Untouchables?
Eliot Ness
Eliot Ness led the small team of agents sent after Al Capone in Chicago. The part made Costner a star, though Jack Nicholson had been announced for it two years earlier.
Q 10In which Midwestern state does Kevin Costner's farmer build a ballpark in his cornfield in Field of Dreams?
Iowa
Iowa still has the field: the diamond built for the film on a farm near Dyersville is kept as a tourist attraction, and Major League Baseball staged a game in the cornfields beside it in 2021.
Q 11Much of Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves is spoken, with English subtitles, in which Native American language?
Lakota
Lakota lines were translated for the cast by Doris Leader Charge, who taught the language at a university. An elder who advised on the film later adopted Costner into his family.
Q 12In Dances With Wolves, what does Kevin Costner's Lieutenant Dunbar name the wolf that keeps visiting his post?
Two Socks
Two Socks is the reason for the film's title: the tribe watch Dunbar playing chase with the animal and give him a name that translates as Dances With Wolves.
Q 13Which actor won a BAFTA as the Sheriff of Nottingham opposite Kevin Costner's Robin Hood in Prince of Thieves?
Alan Rickman
Q 21Which film star did a newlywed Kevin Costner approach on a 1978 flight home to ask about becoming an actor?
Richard Burton
Richard Burton told the young stranger that an acting life without private turmoil was possible, and urged him to try. Costner, flying back from his honeymoon in Mexico, credits the chat with setting his course.
Q 22Which actress played baseball devotee Annie Savoy opposite Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins in the 1988 comedy Bull Durham?
Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon found more than a hit: she and Tim Robbins became a couple that year and stayed together until 2009.
Q 23Kevin Costner's Bull Durham character, minor-league veteran Crash Davis, plays which position on the baseball field?
Catcher
Alan Rickman thought the script so weak that he secretly asked two writer friends to punch up his lines. The studio later demanded re-edits to stop his villain stealing the film.
Q 14Which singer's ballad from Kevin Costner's Robin Hood film spent sixteen straight weeks at UK number one in 1991?
Bryan Adams
Bryan Adams and his co-writer Mutt Lange wrote the ballad in 45 minutes. Its unbroken run at the top beat a UK chart record that had stood since 1955.
Q 15Which actor played the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson opposite Kevin Costner in the baseball fantasy Field of Dreams?
Ray Liotta
Ray Liotta won the part even though the director had pictured a man in his forties, a father figure to Costner. Liotta had the sense of danger the director wanted in the banned outfielder.
Q 16Who wrote the 1970s country song that became the worldwide hit ballad of Kevin Costner's film The Bodyguard?
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton wrote it in 1973 as a farewell to her mentor Porter Wagoner, as she left their partnership for a solo career. Her own recording was a country single years before the film.
Q 17Kevin Costner's 1992 hit The Bodyguard was first written in the 1970s as a vehicle for which movie star?
Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen was meant to star opposite a Motown singer, but he pulled out of negotiations. The script had been passed over 67 times before a studio bought it, and then waited until 1992 to reach the screen.
Q 18Which star directed Kevin Costner as an escaped convict in A Perfect World and also played the lawman chasing him?
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood took the role of the Texas Ranger only because Costner suggested it. The part was small enough to let him spend most of the shoot behind the camera.
Q 19Kevin Costner's Yellowstone character owns the largest cattle ranch in which US state, where the series is set?
Montana
Montana also supplied the main set: the real Chief Joseph Ranch near Darby stands in as the family home. The story was first written as a film before it became a series.
Q 20What is the name of the ranch-owning patriarch Kevin Costner played in the television drama Yellowstone from 2018?
John Dutton
John Dutton was the first regular television series role of Costner's career, taken when he was already in his sixties. It brought him a Golden Globe in 2023.
Catcher Crash Davis took his name from a real ballplayer, Lawrence Davis, but his manner was modelled on the weary outlaw William Holden played in The Wild Bunch.
Q 24In Oliver Stone's JFK, Kevin Costner plays which real New Orleans prosecutor who reopens a president's murder case?
Jim Garrison
Jim Garrison appears in the film himself, cast as Chief Justice Earl Warren, the head of the official inquiry whose lone-gunman conclusion he rejected.
Q 25Which actor played the Deacon, the pirate leader hunting Kevin Costner's Mariner in the 1995 epic Waterworld?
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper stood by the much-mocked production, saying it got a bad name for itself in the United States but did really well in Europe and Asia.
Q 26Kevin Costner's troubled sea epic Waterworld was shot on floating sets in the ocean off which US state?
Hawaii
Hawaii's seas proved costly: one of the floating sets sank in heavy weather and had to be repaired. The shoot still added more than $35 million to the state's economy.
Q 27Kevin Costner's 1997 film The Postman swept five of which mock awards, including Worst Picture, Actor and Director?
Golden Raspberries
Golden Raspberries went to the film in every category it was nominated for. It took $17 million in the United States and Canada against a budget of about $80 million.
Q 28Which rock star has a cameo as the mayor of Bridge City in Kevin Costner's post-apocalyptic film The Postman?
Tom Petty
Tom Petty appears to be playing a future version of himself, something the dialogue implies without ever quite saying. Costner both directed the film and starred in it.
Q 29In Tin Cup, Kevin Costner's driving-range pro Roy McAvoy throws away his chance on the final hole of which golf major?
The U.S. Open
The U.S. Open slips away as McAvoy keeps hitting into the water, finally holing out with his twelfth shot. Costner learned his swing for the film from the golfer Gary McCord, who also appears in it.
Q 30Kevin Costner's breakout role as Jake, a gunfighter's younger brother, came in which 1985 western with Kevin Kline?
Silverado
Silverado was a peace offering: its director had cut every one of Costner's scenes from his previous film and promised him a part in a future project.