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As millions prepare to tune in for Sunday's Academy Awards, let Geoffrey Macnab play the role of Hollywood quizmaster

Absentees and refuseniks

1. Why wasn't Peter Finch there to pick up the Oscar he won as Best Actor for Network (1976) at the 49th Academy Awards?

2. Which "really magnificent woman" and "great lady" (in the words of the producer Melvin Frank, who accepted the Oscar on her behalf) failed to turn up to collect her Oscar for A Touch Of Class at the 46th Academy Awards?

3. "Often to be most eloquent is to be silent," Liv Ullmann observed before she presented the Best Actor Award at the 45th Academy Awards. Who didn't show to pick up his award and why not?

4. Who said: "The whole thing is a goddamn meat parade. I don't want any part of it" after refusing the Oscar for his performance as Patton at the 43rd Academy Awards?

5. In 1961, which Hollywood star was too ill to accept his honorary Oscar, and who accepted it on his behalf?

Boo Boys

6. "You have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums," one actress told the Academy to a chorus of boos when she won a Best Supporting Actress award at the 50th Academy Awards. Who was she?

7. Which American documentary maker was booed at the 75th Academy Awards for berating George W Bush, and what film had he won for?

8. Why were there protests when Elia Kazan won an honorary Oscar in 1999?

She said it here – identify the actress, the speech and the film

9. Which actress broke down in tears as she thanked her family and her grandpa Buster, who "created a beautiful family who love you and love each other more than anything" at the 71st Academy Awards.

10. Who said the following in an emotional speech at the 74th Academy Awards? "Oh my God. I'm sorry. This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It's for the women that stand beside me – Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett – and it's for every nameless, faceless woman of colour that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened."

11. Who said the following when she won her second Best Actress Oscar? "I wanted to say thank you to you [to the Academy]... I want more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it. This time I feel it and I can't deny the fact that you LIKE ME!

12. "I'm in shock and I am so in love with my brother right now." Which Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner baffled the Oscar night audience with her digressions about her family at the 72nd Academy Awards?

Winners and losers

13. What do these classic films have in common: Alfred Hitchcock's The Thirty-Nine Steps, Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels, John Ford's The Searchers, Alexander Mackendrick's The Sweet Smell Of Success, Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep?

14. Rogers Deakins, the British cinematographer nominated for True Grit this year, has been nominated eight times before: for The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, Kundun, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, No Country For Old Men and The Reader. For which of these was he victorious?

15. Tatum O'Neal made a very brief acceptance speech when she won a Best Supporting Actress Award for Paper Moon. How old was she?

16. Which record did Jessica Tandy set when she won a Best Actress award for Driving Miss Daisy?

17. How many Oscars has British animator Nick Park won?

Oscar night gaffes

18. At the 46th Academy Awards in 1946, the photographer Robert Opel earned a place in Oscar night history. What had he done?

19. What did the New York cab driver Stan Berman do to earn his place in Oscar history at the 34th Academy Awards in 1961?

The Oscars and the offbeat

20. Which film partly shot at Fettes College (Tony Blair's alma mater) and starring Scottish comedian Rikki Fulton won an Oscar in 1981?

21. Which Welsh-language film about a First World War poet was Oscar-nominated in 1992.

22. How many years were there between Helen Hayes' two Oscar wins, for The Sin Of Madelon Claudet and for Airport?

23. How much screen time did Dame Judi Dench have in her Oscar-winning role as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare In Love?

24. Which British Nobel Prize winner received two Oscar nominations?

25. What was unusual about Greer Garson's acceptance speech for her Best Actress Award for Mrs Miniver in 1943?

26. Who did Maureen Stapleton thank when she won a Best Supporting Actress Award for Reds in 1982?

27. Which British thespian delighted and confounded the Oscar night audience when he accepted an honorary Oscar from Cary Grant in 1979 with the following speech: "My very noble and approved good masters. In the great wealth, the great firmament of your nation's generosities, this particular choice may perhaps be found by future generations as a trifle eccentric, but the mere fact of it – the prodigal, pure, human kindness of it – must be seen as a beautiful star in that firmament which shines upon me at this moment, dazzling me a little, but filling me with warmth and the extraordinary elation, the euphoria that happens to so many of us at the first breath of the majestic glow of a new tomorrow."

28. Who are hosting this year's Academy Awards?

29. Kathryn Bigelow won last year's Best Director Oscar. How many female directors had won this award before her?

30. Who designed the Oscar statuette for the Academy Awards?

Find out the answers by following the link above.