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50 free Vivien Leigh trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Vivien Leigh trivia quiz covers the two-time Best Actress winner from her birth in British India to the night the West End dimmed its lights for her. The easy questions ask which two roles won her Oscars, who her famous second husband was, where she was born, and which Marlon Brando film she made in 1951. Then it moves into the story everyone half-knows: the agent brother who introduced her on the burning Atlanta set, the director fired from Gone with the Wind, the actors she befriended and the one she clashed with, the secret Santa Barbara wedding witnessed by Katharine Hepburn. The hard end is for classic Hollywood devotees: her real name, the barrister she married at 19, the play that made her a West End sensation, the Churchill favourite That Hamilton Woman, the Old Vic tour where Olivier said he lost her, the film in Ceylon she was replaced on by Elizabeth Taylor, her Tony for Tovarich, Kenneth Tynan's cruel reviews and his recantation, and the lake where her ashes were scattered. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry on Vivien Leigh and the articles on her major films before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Gone with the Wind, classic Hollywood and Laurence Olivier quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Vivien Leigh won her two Best Actress Oscars for Scarlett O'Hara and which other character?
Blanche DuBois
She had already played the part for 326 performances in the West End before making the 1951 film.
Q 02In which city of British India was Vivien Leigh born in 1913?
Darjeeling
Her mother was of Armenian and Irish ancestry, and her father was a Scottish-born broker.
Q 03What was Vivien Leigh's surname at birth?
Hartley
Her stage surname came from her first husband's middle name, Leigh.
Q 04Which future actress was Vivien Leigh's convent schoolfriend, to whom she confided her wish to be 'a great actress'?
Maureen O'Sullivan
They later appeared together in A Yank at Oxford, Leigh's first film to get noticed in America.
Q 05Leigh's first husband, whom she married in 1932 aged 19, worked in which profession?
Barrister
Herbert Leigh Holman disapproved of 'theatrical people'; she left RADA soon after marrying him.
Q 06Which 1935 play brought Leigh her first rave reviews and a contract from Alexander Korda?
The Mask of Virtue
Korda had earlier rejected her as lacking potential; the playbill for this show changed the spelling of her name to Vivien.
Q 07Which future poet laureate described the young Vivien Leigh as 'the essence of English girlhood'?
John Betjeman
A Daily Express interviewer at the same time noted the 'lightning change' in her face that foreshadowed her mood swings.
Q 08Leigh and Olivier began their affair while playing lovers in which 1937 film?
Fire Over England
Both were married to other people; their spouses initially refused to divorce, so the relationship was kept from public view.
Q 09Leigh played Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet in a 1937 Old Vic production staged where?
Elsinore, Denmark
She was chosen despite her relative inexperience, at the castle where the play is set.
Q 10Which role in Wuthering Heights did Leigh turn down because she wanted to play Cathy instead?
Isabella
Cathy went to Merle Oberon, and Leigh stayed in London while Olivier went to Hollywood as Heathcliff.
Q 11Who, per legend, introduced Vivien Leigh to Gone with the Wind's producer with 'Hey, genius, meet your Scarlett O'Hara'?
Myron Selznick
Myron was David's brother and Leigh's American agent, and represented Olivier too.
Q 12Selznick's shortlist for Scarlett was Leigh, Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur and which fourth actress?
Joan Bennett
He had first dismissed Leigh as 'too British' after watching Fire Over England and A Yank at Oxford.
Q 13Which director, fired early in the Gone with the Wind shoot, did Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland secretly consult?
George Cukor
His replacement Victor Fleming quarrelled with Leigh frequently.
Q 21Which statesman arranged a screening of That Hamilton Woman for Franklin D. Roosevelt?
Winston Churchill
The film was made to stir pro-British feeling in America and was a huge success in the Soviet Union too.
Q 22In 1944 Leigh was diagnosed with which disease, which eventually killed her in 1967?
Tuberculosis
She had fallen ill with coughs and fevers while touring North Africa entertaining troops.
Q 23Leigh was filming which 1945 Shaw adaptation when a miscarriage triggered her first major breakdown?
Caesar and Cleopatra
Olivier came to recognise the pattern: days of hyperactivity, then depression and an explosive breakdown she could not remember.
Q 14With which Gone with the Wind co-star, her partner in several emotional scenes, did Leigh clash?
Leslie Howard
She befriended Gable, his wife Carole Lombard and Olivia de Havilland.
Q 15How many Academy Awards did Gone with the Wind win?
10
Leigh also took the New York Film Critics Circle prize, though she insisted, 'I'm not a film star — I'm an actress.'
Q 16Where did Leigh and Olivier marry on 31 August 1940, with only their hosts and two witnesses?
San Ysidro Ranch, Santa Barbara
Ronald and Benita Colman hosted; Katharine Hepburn and Garson Kanin were the witnesses.
Q 17Which actress got the lead in Hitchcock's Rebecca after Selznick judged Vivien Leigh's test wrong 'as to sincerity'?
Joan Fontaine
Selznick noticed she showed no enthusiasm for the part until Olivier was confirmed as the male lead.
Q 18In the 1940 film Waterloo Bridge, Selznick replaced Olivier as Leigh's co-star with which MGM star?
Robert Taylor
Leigh got top billing and the film was a hit with critics and audiences.
Q 19The Oliviers' 1940 Broadway Romeo and Juliet flopped, costing almost all their combined savings of how much?
$40,000
Brooks Atkinson wrote that the 'handsome young people' hardly acted their parts at all.
Q 20In That Hamilton Woman (1941), Leigh played Emma Hamilton opposite Olivier as which naval hero?
Horatio Nelson
Churchill screened it for Roosevelt and later said of Leigh, 'By Jove, she's a clinker.'
Q 24Leigh became Lady Olivier when her husband was knighted in which year?
1947
She accompanied him to Buckingham Palace for the investiture.
Q 25In which city did Olivier slap Vivien Leigh during the 1948 Old Vic tour after she refused to go on shoeless?
Christchurch
She slapped him back, then went on in borrowed pumps; Olivier later said he 'lost Vivien' in Australia.
Q 26Who directed Leigh in the 1949 West End production of A Streetcar Named Desire?
Laurence Olivier
Tennessee Williams and producer Irene Mayer Selznick cast her after seeing The School for Scandal and Antigone.
Q 27How many West End performances did Leigh give in A Streetcar Named Desire before making the film?
326
J. B. Priestley denounced the play and her performance, while Noël Coward called her 'magnificent'.
Q 28Which director of the 1951 Streetcar film preferred Jessica Tandy but came to admire Vivien Leigh's grit?
Elia Kazan
He said she would have 'crawled over broken glass' to improve her performance.
Q 29Besides the Oscar and BAFTA, Leigh's Streetcar performance won her the Volpi Cup at which film festival?
Venice
Tennessee Williams said she brought the role 'everything that I intended, and much that I had never dreamed of'.
Q 30What did Leigh reportedly turn down, worth $5,000 a week, to entertain troops in North Africa in 1943?
A Hollywood studio contract
She fell ill with a persistent cough on that tour, the first sign of the tuberculosis diagnosed the next year.