Sophie's Choice Trivia Quiz

Answer: Meryl Streep

Streep won her second Oscar for "Sophie's Choice" (1982), having previously won the award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979).

In order to portray refugee Zofia (Sophie) Zawistowski, Streep learned to speak English with a Polish accent as well as deliver sections of the movie's dialogue in fluent Polish and German.

Answer: He is a writer.

A Virginia native, Stingo moves into the Brooklyn boarding house where Sophie lives to work on his novel. The movie is told from his perspective, with narration by his older self (voiceover by Josef Sommer).

Answer: Sophie's lover, Nathan

Nathan Landau has a tempestuous relationship with Sophie. In flashback, he is shown to have found Sophie near death from anaemia after she arrived in the US, and nursed her back to health. He was unable to serve in the military during the war, and as a Jewish American strongly identifies with the persecutions of the Holocaust.

Answer: Paranoid schizophrenia

Nathan experiences violent mood swings and constantly accuses Sophie of cheating on him. He is also, by his own admission, a brilliant medical scientist who is on the verge of a Nobel-prize winning discovery. However, when Stingo meets Nathan's brother he discovers that his neighbour's stories are nothing more than delusions.

Answer: Sophie's father

Early in the film Sophie tells Stingo about her father, whom she adored. He was a professor of law who died in a work camp during the war. Later Stingo meets someone who fills him in on the details Sophie left out: her father was virulently anti-Semitic, and supported the Nazi's plan to exterminate the Jews.

Answer: She stole a ham.

Sophie was asked by a member of the Resistance to translate stolen Gestapo documents but she refused, fearing it would endanger the lives of her children. However, she and her children were imprisoned anyway, when she stole a ham to feed her sick mother.
The contrasting psychological tortures undergone by Sophie, a Catholic who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust directly, and Nathan, a Jew who did not, is one of the striking notes of the film.

Answer: Typist

Sophie's fluency in German gave her the opportunity to work in close proximity to the senior Nazi official. She tried to convince him to free her son, Jan, and have him raised as a loyal German. She never found out what happened to Jan.

Höss was the only character in the film who was a real historical figure.

Answer: Which of her children to send to the gas chamber

Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Sophie was informed by a guard that only one of her children would be allowed to go to the labour camp, while the other would be killed immediately. She was ordered to decide which would live, and as she begged for her children to be spared the Nazi threatened to kill them both, forcing her to make the impossible choice in desperation.

The scene was shot in a single take as Streep found it too traumatic to repeat.

Answer: She and Nathan commit suicide.

When Nathan threatens to kill her, Sophie escapes to a hotel with Stingo where she reveals the full tragic details of her past. However, while Stingo sleeps Sophie goes back to Nathan and the tortured pair take cyanide together.

Answer: A novel

The film script was based on a best-selling 1979 novel by William Styron, also called "Sophie's Choice". The novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in the US the year after its publication.

Alan Pakula wrote the screenplay, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium.