Landing On Your Feet Trivia Quiz

Answer: Merle Haggard

Merle Haggard was horn in Oildale, California, and died in Palo Cedro, California, on April 6 2016 - his 79th birthday.

Haggard learnt to play guitar at a young age, but he also got into a lot of trouble and spent periods of time in detention centres.

In between these spells, Haggard was heard singing along at a Lefty Frizzell concert and a career in music began.

Haggard was active on the country music scene for some 50 years from 1960. In that time he topped the Billboard ~Country charts on just short of 40 occasions.

Among those hits were the well-known "Okie From Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side of Me", a song that kicked back at the many anti-Vietnam War songs of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Answer: Walt Disney

Walt Disney worked for Universal Pictures and created a cartoon character called "Oswald The Lucky Rabbit."

However, Universal owned the rights and when they imposed a pay cut he decided to leave and created "Mickey Mouse".

The rest, as they say, is history. (Why is it that people feel the need to add the words "as they say" into what is a perfectly understandable sentence anyway?)

Walt Disney went on to create many well known animated characters and one of the most successful movie studios.

Answer: Drew Carey

For any aspiring comedian, a slot on "The Tonight Show" was akin to the Holy Grail.

Drew Carey was a jobbing comedian who wanted that break badly enough to travel to Los Angeles and live in hope for a year-and-a-half until the "Tonight" producers came knocking on the door of his Datsun (metaphorically at least.)

Other TV roles followed, including "The Drew Carey Show" that was a fictionalisation of his own life.
He was also the host of the improvisation show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?".

Answer: Oprah Winfrey

When she went to pick up her prize at a local radio station, the stationmaster asked her if she wanted to give the mic a try. They liked her voice and hired her as a newsreader.

After work in Nashville and Baltimore she went on to host "AM Chicago" from 1984. That morphed into "The Oprah Winfrey Show", with a national rather than local audience.

Oprah went onto become one of the most influential talk show hosts of her generation. Such was the spread of her audience base, she could attract the biggest names in show business and politics onto her show.

Answer: Harrison Ford

That's right, both both Christopher Walken and Al Pacino turned down the chance to play Han Solo in the first "Star Wars" move (1977).

Harrison Ford had been a jobbing actor for some time from the 1960s but worked hard at keeping up his contacts.

When the other stars turned down the chance to play Han Solo, George Lucas, the movie's producers, remembered Ford.

Four movies in the "Star Wars" franchise followed between 1977 and 2015. Ford was to find even more adulation in the 'Indiana Jones" series between 1981 and 2008.

Answer: J K Rowling

Joanne Rowling credits that delay in her journey from Manchester to London for giving her the chance of creating the character that, six years later, would be transformed into "Harry Potter".

Born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1965, under the name "J. K Rowling" she created the character Harry Potter, an orphan who is sent away to a boarding school for magicians.

A series of books and their movie adaptations made Rowling one of the highest earning writers of her generation. It is estimated that she made up to $1billion.

Not bad for someone who started to write the first Harry Potter book in an Edinburgh coffee shop.

Answer: Charlize Theron

Theron was just 19 when the incident in a Los Angeles bank occurred. A teller refused to cash a cheque and Theron threw a strop.

By chance, waiting in line behind her was a talent agent who gave her his card and introduced her to casting agents.

Theron was born in South Africa in 1975. At the age of 16, she won a dance competition and moved with her mother to Italy and then to the USA.

After her "discovery" in a LA bank by John Crosby (whom she later fired as her agent) she started to make movies. Her first speaking role was in "2 Days in the Valley" (1996).

Bigger roles followed, including "Mighty Joe Young" (1998), and "The Cider House Rules". (1999).
She won an Oscar for "Monster" (2003).

Answer: Johnny Depp

Depp went with a friend to an audition with, it is said, no intention of trying out. He was asked to read for the part of the heroine's boyfriend in "A Nightmare On Elm Street".

Depp was born in Kentucky in 1963, but his family moved around considerably. He played in a rock band before the "Nightmare" role came his way in 1984.

Among other roles were "Platoon" (1986); "Edward Scissorhands" (1990); "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005) and the "Prates of the Caribbean" series (from 2005). He won a Golden Globe for "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" in 2007 and was several times nominated for an Academy Award.

Away from the movie sets, Depp had a colourful and at times controversial life, including an episode in which he seemed to refer to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by an actor in a conversation about incumbent President Donald J. Trump. He was to later apologise.

Answer: Marilyn Monroe

Norma Jean Mortenson, as she was then, worked in a munitions factory during World War Two. A military photographer turned up one day to compile a feature on "Women in War Work".

He recognised how the camera liked Norma Jean and recommended a change of career. After working as a pin up girl, the renamed Marilyn Monroe starred in a number of top films including "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953), and "Some Like It Hot" (1959). She sang "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes".

She was married tree times and also had an affair with President John F. Kennedy. She died in uncertain circumstances in 1962.

Answer: Christie Brinkley

While working in Paris, the then 19-year-old Brinkley was in a post office when an American photographer, Erroll Sawyer, saw her.

He took photographs and introduced her to the Elite Modelling Agency.
Brinkley was born Christine Lee Hudson on February 2, 1954 in Monroe, Michigan. She became one of the world's best known and best paid models
Brinkley starred as the "Uptown Girl" in a video for a Billy Joel hit. They were also married for a time.
Several movie roles followed, and she also starred in the Broadway musical "Chicago".