Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Moonstruck trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Snap out of it! This Moonstruck trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers about Norman Jewison's 1987 romantic comedy: Loretta Castorini and her plumbing-magnate father, the Cammareri brothers and their bakery, the night at the Met, Cosmo's moon, and the Oscar sweep that gave Cher, Olympia Dukakis and writer John Patrick Shanley their statuettes. The opening questions are for anyone who has seen the film: who directed it, what opera they see, why Johnny leaves for Sicily. Then it digs into how the movie got made, from a script called The Bride and the Wolf written for Sally Field, to Ray Liotta's rejected audition, Nicolas Cage's wooden hand and the test screenings that swapped Puccini for Dean Martin. There are box-office numbers, AFI rankings and a few cast biographies for the completists. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, its awards, its song and its cast, and each question links to the page and sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Moonstruck?
Norman Jewison
The Canadian filmmaker was Oscar-nominated for Best Director in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s: for In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof and this film.
Q 02Who wrote the screenplay, winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay?
John Patrick Shanley
The Bronx-born playwright later won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony for a play about a nun and a priest.
Q 03How many Academy Awards did Moonstruck win?
Three
It had six nominations. Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay were the wins.
Q 04What is Loretta Castorini's job?
Bookkeeper
She lives in Brooklyn Heights with her parents and her paternal grandfather.
Q 05Why does Johnny Cammareri leave for Sicily right after proposing?
To tend to his dying mother
He asks Loretta to invite his estranged brother to the wedding before he goes.
Q 06Loretta insists on doing everything properly this time. What does she blame for her first husband's death?
Failing to follow tradition when they married
He died suddenly after two years of marriage. Rose is relieved that Loretta does not actually love Johnny.
Q 07What kind of business does Loretta's father Cosmo run?
Plumbing
It is successful enough that he can pay for a formal wedding; he simply does not want to, because he dislikes Johnny.
Q 08How long have Johnny and his younger brother Ronny not spoken when the film begins?
Five years
Ronny blames Johnny for the accident that cost him his hand, saying his brother distracted him.
Q 09In what setting does Loretta first track down Ronny?
The bakery where he works
The Cammareri Brothers Bakery was in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; when Jewison saw the coal ovens in the basement he moved the scene there.
Q 10What does Loretta cook Ronny in his apartment before delivering her wolf speech?
A steak
She tells him he is like a wolf who gnaws off its own paw to escape a trap, and that the accident was not Johnny's fault.
Q 11Which opera do Ronny and Loretta see at the Met?
La bohème
Shanley wrote Ronny as a bohemian after falling for the opera, and the film uses eleven other cues from it besides the love scene.
Q 12Whom does Loretta spot at the opera, to her horror?
Her father with his mistress
Cosmo points out that she is hardly one to talk, since she is there with Johnny's brother.
Q 13Rose Castorini, dining alone, watches an NYU professor named Perry get dumped by whom?
One of his students
He walks her home; she turns him down because, as she says, she knows who she is.
Q 21Cher chose Nicolas Cage over which other finalist for the role of Ronny?
Peter Gallagher
She liked the other man but concluded that 'Nicky was nuts, and nuts is what we needed', having admired his Gumby accent in Peggy Sue Got Married.
Q 22What detail about Ronny finally hooked Nicolas Cage on the role?
His wooden hand
Cage was at a low point after a cousin's death and disliked the mainstream script until that detail caught him.
Q 23Cage initially played Ronny with a voice modeled on Jean Marais in which 1946 Cocteau film?
Beauty and the Beast
He saw Ronny as the Beast; Jewison talked him out of the voice.
Q 14Rose's brother Raymond recalls a night when Cosmo was courting his sister and what woke him up?
A giant moon
He blamed Cosmo, thinking he had brought the moon to their house, and the memory gives the film its title image.
Q 15Why does Johnny finally call off the wedding?
He says marrying would kill his mother
Loretta throws the ring at him, and Ronny borrows it to propose on the spot.
Q 16What was Shanley's original title for the script?
The Bride and the Wolf
He wrote it for a star who could not picture herself as an Italian from Brooklyn. Jewison thought the title sounded like a horror film.
Q 17For which actress did Shanley originally write the screenplay?
Sally Field
They met for lunch at the Russian Tea Room, and he promised her the part would bring an Oscar nomination.
Q 18Where did Jewison pitch the project to Alan Ladd Jr. and John Goldwyn?
The 1986 Toronto film festival
His pitch already had Cher in the lead. He got Shanley to trim most of the dialogue first.
Q 19Jewison said he cast the film as if it were an opera. Which voice type did he assign to Cosmo?
Bass
Loretta was the soprano, Rose the alto, Johnny the baritone and Ronny the tenor.
Q 20Which future star auditioned for Ronny but was dismissed by Jewison as too young?
Ray Liotta
In the script Ronny was the same age as Loretta. The choice came down to Nicolas Cage and one other actor.
Q 24Where was most of Moonstruck filmed?
Toronto
Shooting took place in early 1987 in the director's home city, with Brooklyn used for locations such as the bakery.
Q 25Who was the dialect coach who helped Cher master a Brooklyn accent in a few weeks?
Julie Bovasso
She also played Loretta's Aunt Rita. Her urging Cage to speak louder and faster in the final scene prompted him to throw a chair.
Q 26Which part of the movie did Jewison call the most difficult of his entire career to shoot?
The final family scene
Cage was persuaded to say, then had cut, lines describing himself as red meat and his brother as milk and cookies.
Q 27Which Puccini aria plays during Ronny and Loretta's love scene?
O soave fanciulla
Jewison took the whole cast to the opera to get them in an operatic frame of mind.
Q 28Why was Puccini's music replaced by Dean Martin's 'That's Amore' over the opening?
Test audiences were not treating the film as a comedy
Once the song went on, test audiences laughed along to the whole movie.
Q 29'That's Amore' first appeared in which 1953 Martin and Lewis comedy?
The Caddy
Composer Harry Warren and lyricist Jack Brooks earned an Oscar nomination for it, losing to 'Secret Love' from Calamity Jane.
Q 30What was Moonstruck's production budget?
$15 million
It grossed $80.6 million in the US and Canada and $122.1 million worldwide.