More Casting Calls Trivia Quiz

Answer: Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda has been acting in films since 1960. She has gone from playing ingenues to mothers-in-law, with a fitness career in between. In 1972 she won her first Academy Award for Best Actress playing a prostitute in "Klute". She became one of the secretaries in the 1980 movie "9 to 5", and Fonda was a TV news reporter in the 1979 disaster film, "The China Syndrome", about a nuclear power plant meltdown.

Answer: James Stewart

Arguably one of the finest actors of all time, James ("Jimmy") Maitland Stewart (1908-1997) was a bomber pilot during World War II who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the Air Force in 1959. Many of his films have become classics, including: "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" in 1939 where he played a junior U.S. Senator.

The following year he was a tabloid reporter in "The Philadelphia Story" and, in 1954, he portrayed 'lost' bandleader Glenn Miller in "The Glenn Miller Story"...and that's not even mentioning "It's a Wonderful Life"!

Answer: Cary Grant

Born Archibald Leach in England, Cary Grant (1904-1986) was the epitome of the suave, sophisticated leading man. In 1940 he starred opposite Rosalind Russell in the screwball comedy "His Gal Friday", where he was a newspaper editor trying to stop his ex-wife and former reporter from re-marrying. On a more serious note, Grant was a government agent spying on Nazis with Ingrid Bergman, in the 1946 film "Notorious".

In between those two movies, he was in a 1944 Frank Capra movie called "Arsenic and Old Lace" about a man who finds out that his two aunts are poisoning old men with their elderberry wine.

Answer: Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson, one of filmdom's more recent stars, has taken on many different kinds of roles. In "Lost in Translation" she is a newlywed who meets up with an aging actor, Bill Murray, in Japan. The 2003 film received rave reviews; personally, I was not a fan.

In 2007's "The Nanny Diaries", based on the 2002 novel, Johansson plays a college graduate who goes to work as a nanny for a wealthy Manhattan family. And then there's the 2005 movie, "The Island" (has anyone seen this film?), in which she and fellow clone Ewan McGregor are trying to get to the paradisaical 'island', only to find things are never as they seem.

Answer: Bradley Cooper

Was this one too easy? After all, how many movies are about Navy SEALS? - probably more than you'd suspect. Anyway, this SEAL was Bradley Cooper in the 2014 movie "American Sniper", about the life of Chris Kyle. Cooper was an ex-criminal and part of the "A-Team" (2010), based on the TV series which ran from 1983 to 1987; he played the role of Face.

In one of his best performances (IMHO), Bradley was a former mental patient who winds up back home with his parents in the 2010 movie "Silver Linings Playbook".

Answer: Drew Barrymore

You may remember Drew Barrymore playing little Gertie in "E.T.", but she has come a long way from that little girl to also become an author, producer and mother. In the 2009 movie "Grey Gardens", Jessica Lange and Barrymore play the real life relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, i.e., Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "little Edie", respectively. Prior to that, Drew is Lucy Whitmore in 2004's "50 First Dates", opposite Adam Sandler playing a man who must reintroduce himself to Lucy each day. Finally, we have Barrymore as Dylan Sanders, one of the three "Charlie's Angels" in the original film franchise in 2000.

Answer: Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman is responsible for a great many memorable roles with a career which began on TV in 1961. If we forget and forgive movies like "Ishtar" and "...Harry Kellerman...", we can look to some incredible performances in movies like "Little Big Man" and, of course, "Midnight Cowboy" ("Hey, I'm walkin' here").

In 1976, Hoffman portrayed Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein in "All the President's Men", about the Watergate break-in. In 1982, he was both unemployed actor Michael Dorsey and soap star Dorothy Michaels in the wonderful film "Tootsie", and, in 1988, he was the autistic savant Raymond Babbitt in a remarkable performance in "Rain Man".

Answer: Shirley MacLaine

One of my personal favorites, Shirley MacLaine, multiple Academy Award nominee, started out as a back-up dancer, and made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Trouble with Harry" in 1955. In 1960, she shone as elevator operator Fran Kubelik. In 1977, she starred with Anne Bancroft as two ballerinas whose lives go in different directions. MacLaine, this cute, wholesome all-American girl (named after Shirley Temple), also played a prostitute, not once but twice, in both "Irma La Douce" in 1963 and again in 1969, in the Bob Fosse musical "Sweet Charity". Now that's what I call versatility!

Answer: Humphrey Bogart

How could I leave out the roles of the great actor Humphrey Bogart? Think about it...to succeed with the name Humphrey! Anyway, he was the inimitable steamer captain Charlie Allnut opposite Katherine Hepburn in "The African Queen", from 1951. Bogart played gangster Duke Mantee opposite Bette Davis and Leslie Howard in the 1936 movie "The Petrified Forest", based on the play by Robert Sherwood. And who could forget Bogart as private investigator (gumshoe) Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon", the 1941 film based on the 1930 novel by Dashiell Hammett?!

Answer: Barbara Stanwyck

An actress from the early days of Hollywood, Barbara Stanwyck displayed her versatility with both dramatic and comedic roles. In the 1948 thriller "Sorry, Wrong Number", Stanwyck plays a disabled heiress who happens to overhear two men planning a murder over the telephone (they had party lines in those days); she is alone in her apartment and the potential killers...well, you'll have to see for yourself.

She is a reporter (there seems to be a lot of that going around) in the 1941 Frank Capra dramedy "Meet John Doe" opposite Gary Cooper, and a burlesque performer in the 1941 comedy "Ball of Fire", also opposite "Coop".