More Money than Sense Trivia Quiz

Answer: John Travolta

Travolta first made his name in the mid-1970s in the TV show "Welcome Back Kotter", which led to lead roles in hit movies such as "Saturday Night Fever" (1977) and "Grease" (1978). He was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood but lost a lot of his lustre with a succession of poorly chosen films.

By the time of "Pulp Fiction" (1994) he was practically a forgotten man but Tarantino's film changed that. Suddenly he was in demand again and a series of hit films followed. However, his hot streak came to a sudden end with "Battlefield Earth" in 2000. Based on the novel by Scientology founder, L. Ron Hubbard, it recounted the tale of the rebellion of the enslaved human race against their giant alien oppressors.

It is a film that has to be seen to be believed and critics generally suggested that you didn't bother. Travolta received the Razzie for Worst Actor for his part in the film.

Answer: Macauley Culkin

It was "Kirkus Reviews" that provided the withering quote from the question in a review that ended with the observation that "Junior" made "Ethan Hawke read like Philip Roth." What little plot and structure the 2006 novel centres around a child star, not too dissimilar from Culkin, and his struggle with a domineering father.

Culkin first made his name in the 1989 movie, "Uncle Buck". The following year he became the most famous child star in the world, and arguably the most famous since Shirley Temple, when he starred as Kevin McCallister in the John Hughes' movie, "Home Alone". The movie became the highest grossing comedy of all time and earned Culkin a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. Sadly, for Culkin, this was a career peak that he achieved at the age of just ten.

Answer: Eddie Murphy

Not quite a renaissance man perhaps but Eddie Murphy is certainly multi-talented. Making his name as a stand-up comedian, he graduated into movies with the hugely successful "48 Hrs" and "Trading Places". His move into music was considerably less successful although Murphy's fame ensured that two of his singles became minor hits. One of these however, "Party All the Time", was voted by music TV channel VH-1 as one of the 50 worst songs of all time.

Answer: Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson's strong faith produced a film that was critically well-received and found an audience among fellow devotees but was never going to find a wide audience, given the language barrier that he constructed. This was in stark contrast to many of his previous successes, such as his breakthrough role as "Mad Max" or the "Lethal Weapon" series. Mel's views on religion have also caused him some notoriety, not least with his ill-judged comments on Judaism that caused understandable offense to adherents of that faith.

Answer: Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen was a huge bankable box office star after a string of action hits, starting with "The Great Escape" (1962). "Le Mans" (1971) firmly ended that run, failing to recoup its $7 million budget. The project was borne of McQueen's petrolheaded obsession with all things fast and vehicular and could almost be classed as a documentary, given the amount of its 106 minute run time that was given over to wordless scenes of cars racing.

However, while this made it a poor box office performer, it became a cult hit among McQueen's fellow racing fans.

Answer: Vanilla Ice

Perhaps once a pop star has a large body of work behind them then they might be less of a risk as a lead for a film with a multi-million dollar budget. However, Vanilla Ice (real name Rob Van Winkle) was little more than a flash in the pan as an A-list pop star.

His one major hit was "Ice Ice Baby", based on a sample from Queen & David Bowie's "Under Pressure", that reached the number one position in both the US and the UK among many other countries. The fatal combination of a star who wasn't that big a star, who was no great shakes as an actor and an unimaginative and lumpy script led inevitably to a box office crash and Van Winkle's acting career was over pretty much as soon as it had started.

Answer: William Shatner

I would recommend listening to "The Transformed Man" if you get a chance. There is genuinely nothing quite like it in the history of pop music, if you discount Shatner's other albums that is. However, one listen will be plenty for most, especially if you are a fan of any of the songs that have been so imaginatively interpreted by the Canadian genius.

Shatner's career in TV has undoubtedly given the world more pleasure. As well as his career-defining stint on "Star Trek", he has also taken lead roles in small screen hits such as "TJ Hooker", "Boston Legal" and "$#*! My Dad Says".

Answer: Madonna

Ritchie made a stunning start to his film career with the surprise hit, "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" in 1998. Its success allowed him to attract the likes of Brad Pitt and Benicio Del Toro to perform in his second film "Snatch" (2000). It also allowed him to meet Madonna, whose record label released the "Lock, Stock..." soundtrack.

"Swept Away" (2002) was Ritchie's third film and failed to make a positive impact with audiences or critics. One of the biggest criticisms that came the film's way was the poverty of the acting, particularly from Madonna. Her performance was rewarded with one of the film's five razzies for worst actress. Ritchie himself was voted as worst director. He soon regained critical respect with films such as "RocknRolla" and "Sherlock Holmes", both notably made without Madonna.

Answer: Bono

Bono, the lead singer of stadium-fillers U2, co-wrote the story and songbook with his fellow band member, The Edge, real name David Evans. The staging of the play "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark", involved a lot of tricky technical stunts allowing the main character to fly around on webs. This helped to contribute to the extremely high costs that soared, like the central character, above all that had come before it.

The mishaps came almost from the start. No fewer than five members of its cast suffered injuries that required hospitalisation, leading to three of them leaving the show. The show was subsequently cited for two failures in keeping its cast and crew safe in the workplace. This, along with numerous re-writes following poor audience and critical reviews, led to the musical remaining in preview for a staggering 182 performances, a New York record.

However, all these problems had an upside. The musical became a cultural phenomenon, with its litany of disasters being reported and talked about by multiple sections of the media. True to the adage of all publicity being good publicity, the show became Broadway's must-see attraction when it finally opened and set new box office records.

Answer: R. Kelly

Starting out as five tracks on the 2005 album, "TP.3 Reloaded", before blossoming into two DVD releases of 22 chapters, the story of "Trapped in the Closet" begin with the protagonist, Sylvester, waking after a one night stand in a woman's house. With her husband about to come back to the house, Sylvester is persuaded to hide in a closet--and so a tale of multiple infidelities begins.

Characters are introduced to the story with each new chapter before, in chapter 9, it is revealed with lyrical brilliance, that there is a second closet-dweller in the tale and "not only is there a man in [a] cabinet, but the man is a midget! Midget! Midget! Midget!"

The opera spawned parodies aplenty, including an Weird Al Yankovic song and an Emmy-nominated episode of "South Park" in which Stan is recognised as the reincarnation of the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.

Kelly had been a hugely successful R&B artist, selling more records in the US in the 1990s then any other artist in the genre. He won three Grammys in 1998 for "I Believe I Can Fly" and has won numerous other awards since. Though it was nominated for a video award at the Grammys, "Trapped in the Closet" failed to claim any awards of its own.