Titanic (1997 Film)
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108 free Titanic (1997 Film) trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
68 free Titanic (1997 Film) trivia questions with answers. James Cameron's Titanic is the film everyone has seen and almost nobody knows as well as they think. This quiz covers the 1997 movie itself, not the ship: who was nearly cast as Jack and Rose, how a $200 million shoot in Mexico ran 22 days over, why the departure scenes had to be flipped, what happened the night someone spiked the crew's soup, and how a song Cameron did not want ended up winning an Oscar. It starts with the easy layer (the leads, the necklace, the singer) and works up to the details only repeat viewers and film-history nerds carry around: the record it tied, the meme it spawned, the real grave in Halifax, the artist who inspired old Rose. It suits a movie night, a pub quiz round, or a rewatch afterparty. Every answer was checked against the film's Wikipedia entries, the 70th Academy Awards record and the pages on the people involved, and each question carries its source. No fan-forum guesses, no recycled listicle errors.
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Q 01Who plays Jack Dawson, the third-class artist at the heart of the film?
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio turned down the lead in Boogie Nights to play Jack, and in 2025 he called passing on that film his biggest regret.
Q 02Which actress plays the young Rose DeWitt Bukater?
Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet was not Cameron's first thought for the part, so she rang him to plead: "I am Rose! I don't know why you're even seeing anyone else!"
Q 03Who plays Cal Hockley, Rose's arrogant fiancé and heir to a steel fortune?
Billy Zane
Billy Zane plays Cal Hockley, the Pittsburgh steel heir; Cameron had considered his Terminator regular Michael Biehn for the role before casting Zane.
Q 04Which actress plays the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown, who lends Jack a dinner suit?
Kathy Bates
Kathy Bates plays Molly Brown, the new-money millionaire who lends Jack her son's suit; the real Margaret Brown urged her lifeboat's crew to go back for survivors, without success.
Q 05Who plays the elderly Rose who narrates the story in 1996?
Gloria Stuart
Gloria Stuart plays the elderly Rose; Cameron wanted a retired Golden Age actress, and Stuart, a 1930s Universal contract player, earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for the role.
Q 06Which actor plays Brock Lovett, the treasure hunter searching the wreck for a lost diamond?
Bill Paxton
Bill Paxton plays Brock Lovett; four years later he joined the director's real expedition to the wreck and narrated the documentary made from it, Ghosts of the Abyss.
Q 07What is the name of Jack's best friend, who boards the ship with him?
Fabrizio
Fabrizio De Rossi, played by Danny Nucci, is Jack's Italian travelling companion; he is killed when one of the ship's funnels topples onto the swimmers.
Q 08What is the name of the blue diamond necklace the treasure hunter is searching the wreck for?
The Heart of the Ocean
The Heart of the Ocean seen on screen was cubic zirconia set in white gold; after the film its London jewellers remade it with a real 171-carat sapphire for a charity auction.
Q 09When John Jacob Astor asks about his family at dinner, Jack says he is one of the Dawsons from where?
Chippewa Falls
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, is Jack's hometown, but his tale of ice fishing there on Lake Wissota is a slip: the lake was not created until 1917, five years after the sinking.
Q 10How does Jack come by his third-class ticket for the Titanic?
He wins it in a poker game
He wins it in a poker game in a dockside pub minutes before sailing, beating two Swedes, Olaf and Sven, with a full house.
Q 11Who composed the film's score?
James Horner
James Horner composed the score; he and Cameron had clashed badly on an earlier film a decade before, but Cameron rehired him after admiring his Braveheart score.
Q 12Which singer performs the end-credits song "My Heart Will Go On"?
Celine Dion
Celine Dion at first refused to record it, having already sung two film themes and not wanting to push her luck; her husband and manager, René Angélil, talked her round.
Q 13As the ship goes down in the film, which hymn does bandleader Wallace Hartley begin alone on his violin?
Nearer, My God, to Thee
Q 21Whose long-standing record for most Oscar wins did the film equal?
Ben-Hur
Ben-Hur had held the record of 11 alone for 38 years; Titanic drew level only with the last envelope of the night, when Sean Connery read out Best Picture.
Q 22With 14 nominations, the film tied the Oscar record set by which 1950 movie?
All About Eve
All About Eve had held the record for 47 years; Titanic matched it without a nomination for its leading man, and upset fans rang the Academy to ask whether he could still be added.
Q 23The film's Best Actress nominee lost to which performer?
Helen Hunt
Helen Hunt won for As Good as It Gets, which took both lead acting Oscars on a night when Titanic's 11 wins did not include a single one for its cast.
Nearer, My God, to Thee is the hymn popular memory gives the band's last minutes, though the ship's surviving wireless operator recalled a tune called "Autumn" instead.
Q 14Cameron wrote the screenplay listening to which Irish singer, whom he first asked to score the film?
Enya
Enya turned the offer down because it would have meant collaborating on the music, something she said she had never done; she was also busy with an album of her own.
Q 15The score's wordless vocals are sung by Sissel, a star in which country?
Norway
Norway's Sissel Kyrkjebø had sung the Olympic Hymn at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games; the composer tried dozens of singers before settling on her voice.
Q 16Titanic's $200 million budget took the record for most expensive film ever from which 1995 release?
Waterworld
Waterworld, at about $172 million, was remembered as a costly flop, so Cameron says the press decided his own over-budget sea epic was going to be another one.
Q 17Which studio partnered with 20th Century Fox to co-finance the film and took the US distribution rights?
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures paid $65 million for the North American rights while Fox kept the rest of the world, the same split the two studios had just used on Braveheart.
Q 18In which country did Fox build a new studio and a near-full-size ship replica to film Titanic?
Mexico
Mexico: Fox built a whole studio on the coast near Rosarito for the shoot, and its giant water tanks later served other sea epics, among them Pearl Harbor and Master and Commander.
Q 19Titanic's replica ship sat in a giant outdoor tank looking out over which body of water?
The Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean stood in for the North Atlantic: the 17-million-gallon tank was built at the water's edge so that its surface seemed to run straight out into the real sea.
Q 20Accepting the Best Director Oscar, Cameron shouted which line from his own film?
I'm the king of the world!
"I'm the king of the world!" is Jack's shout from the bow; Cameron borrowed it in triumph, and says he knew it had misfired when he saw Warren Beatty's face backstage.
Q 24The actress playing the elderly Rose lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to which performer?
Kim Basinger
Kim Basinger won for L.A. Confidential; she has said she was so sure the 87-year-old from Titanic would take it that she sat still when her own name was read out.
Q 25Cameron's script was not even nominated, yet he won three Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director and which other?
Best Film Editing
Best Film Editing was the first of his three wins that night; he recalls walking up to collect it worried that his trousers were about to fall down.
Q 26Which film finally overtook Titanic as the highest-grossing film ever, in 2010?
Avatar
Avatar was Cameron's own next feature: it passed Titanic's worldwide total in January 2010, so the director ended his own twelve-year reign.
Q 27Which film had held the worldwide box-office record before Titanic overtook it in 1998?
Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park had itself taken the record from E.T., so Steven Spielberg dethroned his own film five years before Titanic sailed past both of them.
Q 28Which film ended Titanic's 15 straight weekends atop the North American box office?
Lost in Space
Lost in Space, a remake of the 1960s TV series, opened at number one in April 1998 and lasted exactly one weekend there before City of Angels replaced it.
Q 29The film's world premiere took place on November 1, 1997, in which city?
Tokyo
Tokyo got the premiere because Cameron refused to open in Los Angeles: anywhere with a credible film festival would do, he said, as long as it wasn't L.A.
Q 30When Titanic slipped to December 1997, its US distributor rushed which sci-fi horror film into the summer gap?
Event Horizon
Event Horizon was hurried out that August with its editing time cut short; it flopped at the box office and only later found its audience as a cult film on video.