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50 free Steven Spielberg trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
43 free Steven Spielberg trivia questions with answers. Steven Spielberg invented the summer blockbuster with Jaws, made the most-seen family film of the 1980s in E.T., won his Oscars for two very different World War II films, and is still working. This quiz covers the whole career: the Eagle Scout who snuck onto the Universal lot, Duel and The Sugarland Express, the shark that would not work, Indiana Jones and the birth of PG-13, Jurassic Park's box-office record, Schindler's List and the Shoah Foundation, DreamWorks, and the late-period run from Lincoln to The Fabelmans. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has seen his big films, a third are medium and the rest are for people who know why his company is called Amblin. Every answer is checked against the reference pages for Spielberg and his films.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Steven Spielberg born in 1946?
Cincinnati
His family moved to New Jersey when he was six and to Phoenix, Arizona, when he was ten.
Q 02Spielberg made his first film, a nine-minute 8 mm Western, to earn what?
A Boy Scout photography merit badge
He became an Eagle Scout at 13; The Last Gunfight was his first movie.
Q 03Which film school famously rejected the young Spielberg because of his mediocre grades?
USC
He enrolled at California State University, Long Beach instead and later dropped out to direct TV for Universal.
Q 04What 1968 short got Spielberg his Universal contract and later named his production company?
Amblin'
Firelight was his earlier feature-length sci-fi film, funded mainly by his father.
Q 05Spielberg's directorial debut, Duel (1971), pits Dennis Weaver's salesman against what?
A menacing tanker truck
Richard Matheson adapted his own Playboy short story; the film aired as an ABC Movie of the Week before playing in cinemas.
Q 06Which 1974 Goldie Hawn film was Spielberg's theatrical debut with John Williams scoring?
The Sugarland Express
Williams has scored all but five of Spielberg's features since.
Q 07Jaws was shot mostly on location on which Massachusetts island?
Martha's Vineyard
The sandy sea floor stayed shallower than 35 feet for 12 miles offshore, letting the mechanical sharks work out of sight of land.
Q 08Jaws held the record as highest-grossing film in history until which movie arrived two years later?
Star Wars
Spielberg has said the malfunctioning mechanical shark made the film better by forcing him to suggest rather than show.
Q 09In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the aliens' coordinates lead to which Wyoming landmark?
Devils Tower
French director François Truffaut plays the scientist Claude Lacombe.
Q 10Which 1979 Spielberg action-comedy, written by Zemeckis and Gale, was regarded as his first critical flop?
1941
One critic called it "the most conspicuous waste since the last major oil spill", though it still grossed $92 million.
Q 11Raiders of the Lost Ark was based on a story by which two men?
George Lucas and Philip Kaufman
Lawrence Kasdan wrote the screenplay to link the set pieces Lucas and Spielberg had dreamed up.
Q 12Which sequel's dark content led directly to the creation of the PG-13 rating in 1984?
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Spielberg met his future wife on the film.
Q 13Who wrote the screenplay for Spielberg's 1982 film about a stranded alien and a boy named Elliott?
Melissa Mathison
Q 21How many Academy Awards did Schindler's List win?
Seven
They included Best Picture and Spielberg's first Best Director; the AFI ranked the film eighth-greatest American movie in 2007.
Q 22What did Spielberg do with his profits from Schindler's List?
Founded the Shoah Foundation
He took no salary for the film and used the proceeds to archive testimonies of Holocaust survivors, starting in 1994.
Q 23Spielberg co-founded DreamWorks in 1994 with which two partners?
Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen
The film closed the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, and E.T. became the first film character shortlisted for TIME's Man of the Year.
Q 14Which actor played Elliott, the boy who befriends E.T.?
Henry Thomas
Drew Barrymore, then six, played his little sister Gertie.
Q 15The Color Purple (1985), Spielberg's first dramatic film, was adapted from a novel by whom?
Alice Walker
Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey starred; Spielberg worried he would be accused of lacking the sensibility for character studies.
Q 16Empire of the Sun (1987) was the first American film shot in which city since the 1930s?
Shanghai
A young Christian Bale starred; Spielberg called it one of his most enjoyable shoots.
Q 17In Hook (1991), who plays the grown-up Peter Pan?
Robin Williams
Dustin Hoffman is Captain Hook and Julia Roberts is Tinker Bell; the film made over $300 million.
Q 18Jurassic Park surpassed which film to become the highest-grossing movie of all time in 1993?
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
It held the title until Titanic in 1997, and won three Oscars for effects and sound.
Q 19Jurassic Park is set on which fictional island off Costa Rica?
Isla Nublar
Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm was written into the film at Spielberg's insistence after Goldblum auditioned.
Q 20Schindler's List was based on a Booker Prize-winning novel by which Australian author?
Thomas Keneally
Schindler's Ark was published in 1982; the film shot for 72 days in Kraków, in black and white.
The SKG in DreamWorks SKG stands for the three founders' surnames.
Q 24Which 1997 Spielberg film about an 1839 slave-ship revolt was his first release under DreamWorks?
Amistad
Spielberg admitted it "became too much of a history lesson" and underperformed.
Q 25Saving Private Ryan's Omaha Beach sequence was actually filmed on a beach in which country?
Ireland
Curracloe Beach in County Wexford stood in for Normandy; the scene cost $12 million and used 1,500 extras.
Q 26How many times has Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director?
Two
Both were for World War II films, Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan; the former also won Best Picture.
Q 27A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) was a long-gestating project of which director, who died in 1999?
Stanley Kubrick
Kubrick had held the rights since 1979 and had himself suggested Spielberg direct.
Q 28Minority Report, based on a Philip K. Dick story, is set in what year?
2054
Tom Cruise's Precrime unit in Washington uses psychic "precogs" to arrest murderers before they act.
Q 29Catch Me If You Can (2002) is based on the autobiography of which con artist?
Frank Abagnale
Leonardo DiCaprio played him, with Tom Hanks as the FBI agent on his trail.
Q 30Spielberg's Munich (2005) dramatizes Israel's response to the murder of its athletes at which event?
The 1972 Olympics
It earned five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.