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50 free Laurence Olivier trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Laurence Olivier trivia quiz covers the six-decade career of the clergyman's son from Dorking who became, by common consent, the greatest actor of the twentieth century. It runs from drama school with Peggy Ashcroft and a break in Noël Coward's Private Lives, through the record-breaking 1935 Romeo and Juliet with John Gielgud, Hamlet at Elsinore, and the Old Vic seasons that made his Richard III and Oedipus legendary, to the founding of Britain's National Theatre and his last Shylock and Lear. The films are all here: Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Maxim de Winter in Hitchcock's Rebecca, Nelson in That Hamilton Woman, the wartime Henry V, the Oscar-winning Hamlet, Crassus in Spartacus, Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Sleuth with Michael Caine, the Nazi dentist of Marathon Man and Mengele in The Boys from Brazil. There are also questions on his three marriages, to Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh and Joan Plowright, his knighthood, peerage and Poets' Corner memorial, and the awards that carry his name. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Olivier, his films and his co-stars, and each explanation adds one further detail. Suited to film buffs, theatre lovers and anyone who has ever shouted 'Is it safe?'
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Surrey town was Laurence Olivier born in 1907?
Dorking
He was the youngest child of a high-church Anglican priest known as Father Olivier, and came from a long line of Protestant clergymen.
Q 02Who decided that the young Olivier should become an actor?
His clergyman father
The family had no theatrical connections at all; the frugal Reverend Olivier also insisted his son win a scholarship to drama school.
Q 03Which future Dame, Olivier's contemporary at the Central School, called him 'rather uncouth' with short sleeves?
Peggy Ashcroft
Principal Elsie Fogerty later said that the two of them stood out among all her pupils.
Q 04Olivier's first important West End success came in 1930 as Victor Prynne in which play?
Private Lives
The author played Elyot opposite Gertrude Lawrence at the new Phoenix Theatre and called Victor and Sybil 'extra puppets'.
Q 05In the famous 1935 Romeo and Juliet, Olivier and John Gielgud did what partway through the run?
Exchanged their two leading parts
The production broke box-office records for the play, running for 189 performances, though Olivier was enraged by his reviews.
Q 06In June 1937 the Old Vic took Olivier's Hamlet to perform at which real location from the play?
Elsinore, Denmark
Torrential rain forced the show into a hotel ballroom, but Olivier had secured Vivien Leigh as Ophelia and a tradition was born.
Q 07Which Emily Brontë character did Olivier play in his 1939 Hollywood breakthrough?
Heathcliff
A $50,000 salary lured him to Wuthering Heights opposite Merle Oberon and David Niven, directed by William Wyler.
Q 08Olivier played the brooding widower Maxim de Winter in which 1940 Hitchcock film?
Rebecca
It was Hitchcock's first American film; producer David O. Selznick cast Joan Fontaine rather than Vivien Leigh partly to keep the lovers apart until their divorces came through.
Q 09Which naval hero did Olivier play opposite Vivien Leigh in the 1941 wartime film That Hamilton Woman?
Horatio Nelson
Alexander Korda directed it with Churchill's support and involvement as propaganda for the British cause.
Q 10Olivier's first film as director, in 1944, was which Shakespeare play, made as a wartime morale booster?
Henry V
The British government part-funded it, and the battle scenes were shot in neutral Ireland where 650 extras were easier to find.
Q 11Which composer wrote the score for Olivier's Henry V?
William Walton
Robert Newton played Pistol and Leslie Banks the Chorus in a film first dedicated to Britain's Commandos and Airborne Troops.
Q 12Olivier's 1948 Hamlet was the first British film to win which Academy Award?
Best Picture
Olivier also took Best Actor and the Golden Lion at Venice, despite purists' fury at ninety minutes of cuts.
Q 13How much of the play's roughly four-hour running time did Olivier cut for his 1948 film of Hamlet?
Around 90 minutes
He dropped Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's political intrigue to focus on the relationships.
Q 21Which festival theatre did Olivier direct from 1961, staging Uncle Vanya in its opening season?
Chichester
His forty-strong company included Sybil Thorndike, Michael Redgrave and Joan Plowright.
Q 22Which Italian director called Olivier's 1964 Othello 'an anthology of everything that has been discovered about acting'?
Franco Zeffirelli
Directed by John Dexter, the production was a box-office hit revived over five seasons, though it divided critics.
Q 23Olivier's last stage appearance in a Shakespeare play, at the National in 1970, was as which character?
Shylock
He agreed to a second five-year term because the new building was so delayed, and later played Lear only on television in 1983.
Q 14Which honour did Olivier receive in the 1947 Birthday Honours?
A knighthood
The peerage followed in 1970, after he declined it in 1967, and the Order of Merit in 1981.
Q 15With John Burrell and a famous fellow actor, Olivier co-directed which London company in the 1940s?
The Old Vic
His most celebrated roles there were Richard III and Sophocles's Oedipus, the latter paired in one evening with Sheridan's farce The Critic.
Q 16In the 1938 Old Vic Othello, Olivier played Iago to whose Othello?
Ralph Richardson
Director Tyrone Guthrie wanted Iago driven by suppressed love for Othello; Richardson would not play along and audiences missed the point.
Q 17Which Roman general did Olivier play in Kubrick's Spartacus (1960)?
Marcus Licinius Crassus
Charles Laughton was Gracchus and Peter Ustinov the gladiator-school owner Batiatus; Olivier got a Golden Globe nomination.
Q 18Olivier's seedy music-hall comedian Archie Rice appears in which John Osborne play?
The Entertainer
He asked for the part after reading only the first act, having long joked he could have been a third-rate comic called Larry Oliver.
Q 19Which American star did Olivier direct and act opposite in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)?
Marilyn Monroe
Her husband Arthur Miller took Olivier to see Look Back in Anger during filming, which changed the direction of his career.
Q 20Olivier was the founding director of Britain's National Theatre during which years?
1963 to 1973
The company played at the Old Vic until 1976, when the largest auditorium of the new South Bank building, named after him, was complete.
Q 24Which literary adviser did Olivier recruit for the National Theatre, later clashing with the board over Soldiers?
Kenneth Tynan
The board vetoed Rolf Hochhuth's play because it depicted Churchill as complicit in the death of Poland's General Sikorski.
Q 25In Sleuth (1972) Olivier's crime novelist Andrew Wyke plays cat and mouse with which co-star?
Michael Caine
Both men were Oscar-nominated, and it was Joseph L. Mankiewicz's final film.
Q 26What is the name of the Nazi war criminal Olivier plays in Marathon Man (1976)?
Christian Szell
The dentist-torturer ranked 34th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest villains and won Olivier a Golden Globe.
Q 27Who plays the graduate student and distance runner tortured by Olivier's character in Marathon Man?
Dustin Hoffman
John Schlesinger directed William Goldman's adaptation of his own 1974 novel.
Q 28In The Boys from Brazil (1978), Olivier's Nazi hunter pursues which real Auschwitz doctor, played by Gregory Peck?
Josef Mengele
Ira Levin's plot has the fugitive doctor ordering the murder of 94 sixty-five-year-old civil servants for a cloning scheme.
Q 29Which aristocrat did Olivier play in the 1981 television serial Brideshead Revisited, winning an Emmy?
Lord Marchmain
It was one of five Emmys he won; his last BAFTA nomination came for A Voyage Round My Father the following year.
Q 30Olivier's final Shakespearean role, for Granada Television in 1983, was which king?
Lear
He had already played the part on stage decades before at the Old Vic.