This Dark and Starry Night Trivia Quiz

Answer: Halle Berry

Halle Berry grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She has entered several beauty contests, including Miss World. She won Miss Teen All American and Miss Ohio USA. Halle has been a head cheerleader and a model. She earned a degree in broadcast journalism.

Halle started her acting experience in the television series "Living Dolls" in 1989. She later played the part of Sharon Stone in the comedy film "The Flintstones" (1994). She won several awards for playing the title role in the television movie "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge" (1999).

Into the next decade, Halle starred as the female superhero Storm in "X-Men" (2000) and in three of its sequels. For her part in the romantic drama "Monster's Ball" (2001), she became the first woman of color to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. Halle is of mixed race descent.

There is so much more. What about "Catwoman" (2004), "Frankie and Alice" (2010) and "Kings" (2017)? She has worked with three other people as Executive Producer on the comedy series "Boomerang" in 2019.

Answer: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Whoopi Goldberg is an actress (actor), stand-up comedian, author, business entrepreneur and activist. She is from New York City. Whoopi is one of the few people to have won all four major American entertainment awards (an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony).

Look at Whoopi's filmography. She won three, and was nominated for two, awards for her portrayal of Celie Johnson in "The Color Purple" (1985). Some of her most memorable acting performances also include "Fatal Beauty" (1987), "Sister Act" (1992), "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" (1998) and "For Colored Girls" (2010). Her greatest achievement was probably as Oda Mae Brown in "Ghost" (1990).

"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" is a play by August Wilson. It premiered in 1984 and is part of a ten-play cycle of plays about the African-American experience in the 20th century. In this play, Ma Rainey (played by Whoopi in 2003 on Broadway) is a blues singer. The back bottom dance is a dance which was popular in the 1920s.

Answer: Black Panther

The 2018 film "Black Panther" takes place mainly in a fictional African country called Wakanda. A superhero called T'Challa (played by Chadwick Boseman) returns to Wakanda from California to reclaim his throne. He is the Black Panther. This movie won three Academy Awards.

Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia) is Mexican-Kenyan. She spent most of her childhood in Kenya, later studied in Mexico, then studied at college in the United States gaining a degree in film and theatre studies. She later got a masters degree in acting at Yale. She has starred in "12 Years a Slave" (2013) and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (2015).

Angela Bassett (Ramondo) was originally from New York City. She later studied and got degrees at Yale in African-American studies and in Fine Arts (which includes theater). She has starred in the television movie "The Rosa Parks Story" (2002) and the biographic film "Notorious" (2009).

Letitia Wright (Shuri) is Guyanese-English. She is a north London girl. Her first film and television appearances were in 2011. She starred in the movie "Urban Hymn" (2015) and took on the role of Shuri in "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018) and "Avengers: Endgame" (2019). She won four awards for her role as Shuri in "Black Panther".

Danai Gurira (Okoye) is an American actress, playwright and activist. She won nine awards for her play "Eclipsed" which premiered in 2009. She earned degrees in psychology and in fine arts. Danai has acted on film, television, and on stage. She has played Michonne in eight seasons of "The Walking Dead". She also played the role of Okoye in in "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018) and "Avengers: Endgame" (2019).

Florence Kasumba (Ayo) is Ugandan-German. She earned a degree in acting, singing and dancing in Tilburg in The Netherlands. Florence has starred in several superhero films. She also played the role of Ayo in "Captain America: Civil War" (2016) and "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018). She played Senator Acantha in "Wonder Woman" (2017).

Answer: Comedy

"Orange is the New Black" is an award-winning comedy-drama television web series which ran for seven seasons from 2013 to 2019. It is based on the more serious 2010 biography "Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison" by Piper Kerman. The character Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren (seasons 1 to 6) suffers from mental instability. One of the awards which Ozu won for this role was "Outstanding Performance for a Female Actor in a Comedy Series".

Ozu Aduba comes from Massachusetts. Apart from being an actress, she is also a singer. She sang opera in a show called "The View" and got good reviews for it. Among her stage credits is her role of Helena in Danai Gurira's play "Eclipsed". She has starred as Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, in the television special "The Wiz Live!" (2015). She played the part of a state senator and mother in the comedy film "Candy Jar" (2018).

Answer: Angela Bassett

Angela Bassett has appeared in an amazingly long list of movies, television films, television series, theater stage parts, video games, also directing and producing.

Angela has appeared on stage as Lady Macbeth in "Macbeth" in 1998. She has starred in the movies "Malcolm X" (1992), "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" (1998), "Akeelah and the Bee" (2006) and "Avengers: Endgame" (2019). Her television roles include Dr. Cate Banfield in 16 episodes of ER (2008-09). As of 2019, she has won 16 awards and has been nominated 63 times.

"Black Nativity" (2013) is a film that is based on the 1961 gospel-song play by Langston Hughes, also called "Black Nativity". It is a musical drama centered around relationships, crime, religion and family. Angela Bassett plays the role of Aretha Cobbs, wife of Rev. Cornell Cobbs.

Answer: Viola Davis

Viola Davis is the only possible option of the four if you know that the other three ladies are all sporting champions or ex-sporting champions.

Viola was born on her grandmother's farm in South Carolina, but she was brought up in Rhode Island. She has gained degrees in fine arts and theater. She has starred in the movies "The Help" (2011), "Suicide Squad" (2016) and "Widows" (2018).

The Triple Crown of Acting is an Academy Award, an Emmy Award and a Tony Award. Viola won these awards for her parts in the play "King Hedley 11" (2001) the film "Fences" (2016) and the television series "How to Get Away With Murder" (2014-19).

Answer: Black Monday

Regina Hall stars as Dawn Towner (Darcy) in the comedy television series "Black Monday". Dawn is the only female head trader on Wall Street at that time (October 1987). In an interview Regina said, "I love that Dawn is a feminist of the 80s".

Regina had intended to become a journalist. She has got a degree in English and a Master's degree in journalism. When her father died, she had a change of heart and went into the entertainment business.

Her other most notable television appearances include "NYPD Blue" (2001-02) and "Law & Order: LA" (for seven episodes). As for movies, Regina starred in "Scary Movie" (2000) and in three of the four "Scary Movie" sequels. She starred in "Girls Trip" (2017) and the Award-winning "Support the Girls" (2018) for which she won an Award for Best Actress.

Answer: Issa Rae

The full title for Issa Rae's comedy web series "Awkward Black Girl" is "The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl". This series has won a Shorty Award (or "Shorty" for short) for Best Web Series. Issa's character, called J, has to struggle with personal difficulties in many social encounters. "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl" (without the hyphen) has been published as a book too.

Issa Rae is an American actress, writer, director, producer, activist and web series creator. She earned a degree in African and African-American studies at Stanford University. She has been responsible for many television productions, but has only acted in a few of them. This includes the comedy-drama series "Insecure" (premiered 2016). It has won nine awards with 22 nominations.

Issa stars in the 2019 fantasy comedy film "Little" with Regina Hall and Marsai Martin. It has some parallels with the film "Big", but with an adult in a child's body and situation.

Answer: Black Coffee

In the romantic comedy film "Black Coffee", Robert (Darrin Henson) gets sacked from his late father's company, so to earn money he has to take a more modest job delivering coffee. That is how he meets Morgan (Gabrielle Dennis).

Gabrielle Dennis is an American actress, comedian (including stand-up), dancer, singer and television host. She was brought up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts. She later earned an arts degree at Howard University, Washington DC.

Her movie career started in the 1990 comedy-fantasy film "A Mom For Christmas". Gabrielle's other film roles include the teen comedy film "Bring It On: Fight to the Finish" (2009) and romance film "Politics of Love" (2011).

Gabrielle has appeared many times on television. She has appeared in the comedy-drama series "The Game" (seasons 2-5, 2007-12) and as Nightshade (Tilda) in the award-winning superhero web series "Luke Cage" (2017-18). She plays the role of Whitney Houston in the two-part biopic "The Bobby Brown Story" (2018). She has a guest appearance as Tina Turner in the drama series "American Soul" (2019).

Answer: Jenifer Lewis

Jenifer Lewis has starred and appeared in an amazing number of film, television, video voice, stage and cabaret roles (more than 300 as of 2019). She has earned the titles "Black Mother of Hollywood" and "Reigning Queen of High-Camp Cabaret".

Jenifer comes from St Louis, Missouri. She earned a degree in theater arts at Webster University, a private university in St Louis. She won the "2018 Book of the Year" award for telling her story in "The Mother of Black Hollywood: a Memoir".

Some of her most notable movie appearances include "What's Love Got to Do With It" (1993), "Jackie's Back" (1999), "Five" (2011) and "Baggage Claim" (2013).

Her television appearances include "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" (1991-96), "Courthouse" (1995) and "Strong Medicine" (2000-06). For her role in the award-winning sitcom "Black-ish" (premiered 2014), Jenifer won a Black Reel Award and was nominated for three other awards. In "Black-ish", we view the lives of an upper middle class family called Johnson who are African-Americans. Jenifer Lewis plays the part of Ruby Johnson.