Mariska Hargitay is known for her long and storied acting career, playing the role of Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit since 1999, and now appearing in the same role in Law and Order: Organised Crime.
But what some viewers might not realise is that it runs in the family.
The actress has deep roots in Hollywood, thanks to her mother, ’50s bombshell and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield.
Unfortunately, Mariska did not get to know her mother very well, with Mansfield having tragically passed away in a freak accident – one Mariska miraculously escaped from.
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Mariska was born on January 23, 1964 as the youngest child of Mansfield and her second husband, Hungarian actor, body builder and former Mr. Universe 1955, Mickey Hargitay.
The couple had met and fallen quickly in love in May 1956 and tied the knot in January 1958, days after her first divorce was finalised.
After they wed, they took their show on the road. Mickey made his debut as an actor with a small part in Mansfield’s film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), before going on to be her leads in Italian films such as The Loves of Hercules (1960) and L’Amore Primitivo (1964).
The couple also made a name for themselves touring in stage shows and nightclub acts as a performing team, with Mansfield sporting her iconic leopard-spot bikini. A highlight of the show was Mickey using his strength to toss Mansfield around his waist.
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Mariska has two older brothers, Miklós and Zoltán, as well as three half-siblings – Jayne Marie Mansfield and Antonio “Tony” Cimber, from her mother’s first marriage to Paul Mansfield and third marriage to Matt Climber respectively, as well as Tina Hargitay, from her father’s first marriage.
Her parents were divorced in May 1963, before she was even born, but found their fast-tracked Mexican divorce was not recognised in America. They reconciled a few months before her birth in 1964, but soon separated again, with the divorce being recognised in August.
Mariska would end up spending only three short years with her mother before she would witness her death before her own eyes.
On that fateful night of June 29, 1967, Mansfield, her attorney and boyfriend Sam Brody, their 20-year-old driver Ronnie Harrison and her three children with her second husband were bundled up in a 1966 Buick Electra 225, leaving Biloxi, Mississippi after two shows there for New Orleans, where Mansfield was to appear on WDSU’s Midday Show the next day.
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The party never made it to their destination. At 2:30am, their car had slid under the back of a Johnson’ tractor-trailer, which in turn had slowed down to an insecticide fog-spraying truck.
The accident took the top of the Electra clean off, killing the three adults in the front seat on impact. Mariska and her two brothers, who were asleep in the backseat, escaped with minor injuries.
Thus began the urban legend that Mansfield was decapitated during the accident, with police crime scene photos showing the car with some blonde hair tangled in the front windshield, seemingly affirming the theories. Though Mansfield did die of severe head trauma, the decapitation theory has been debunked.
Since her death, there has been a push to fit trucks with an underride guard to ensure horrific accidents like this don’t happen again. In America, this bar is sometimes called the “Mansfield bar”.
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After her mother’s death, her father Mickey came to pick Mariska and her siblings up, raising them in Los Angeles with his new wife, airline stewardess Ellen Siano, who he wed in 1968.
“The beauty is that families are made in so many different ways, and that was my reality as a child,” Mariska commented in a 2018 People interview “Growing up, my family was made in such an interÂesting and unique way.”
Despite her mother’s legacy, Mariska did not like to be compared to her. Instead, she began her career following her father’s stead. At 18, having been newly crowned Miss Beverly Hills USA, she had told Time in 1982, “My dad was Mr. Universe, so it would be fun for me to be Miss Universe.”
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She would go on to compete in Miss California USA and place fourth-runner-up before enjoying a short but action-packed film and TV career, before finally turning to her magnum opus, Law & Order: SVU.
Mariska ended up becoming very close to her father, with the proud dad even once appearing in a 2003 episode of the show, making a cameo as a witness to a violent crime.
She lost her father soon after in 2006, to cancer.
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”It was huge to lose this person who was my everything, my strength, my power, the person who believed in me… But I got to say goodbye, and I remember it was very calm, and he just looked at me and he said, ‘Mariska… Always’,” he recalled.
“I already carried his fire, the lessons that he taught me, his compasÂsion, his love, his kindness. Now I do feel that he’s with me. Even though he’s not here physically, I carry him.”
Almost 20 years after his death, she finally revealed the truth she had kept to herself for decades – Mickey Hargitay was not her real father.
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In her directorial debut My Mom Jayne – which premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2025 – and a Vanity Fair exclusive, she revealed the shock truth to the world.
The actress shared that she had always felt different to the rest of her family, but couldn’t put her finger on it until someone showed her a photo of Italian entertainer Nelson Sardelli in her twenties.
When Mariska laid eyes on the snap, she said she immediately knew she was looking at her father. ”It was like the floor fell out from underneath me,” she recalled in her film, “Like my infrastructure dissolved.”
Mansfield had a highly-publicised fling with Sardelli after filing for divorce from Mickey in 1963, before she again reconciled with her second husband months before Mariska’s birth in 1964.
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When she confronted her father with the fact, he immediately denied it, with the experience being so traumatising Mariska never brought up again in his lifetime.
“He was my everything, my idol. He loved me so much, and I knew it,” she told Vanity Fair of the man she knew as her father.
Nevertheless, curiosity got the best of her and she had to confirm the truth for herself. In her thirties, she went to Atlantic City in the US where Sardelli was performing.
The moment she introduced herself to him he burst into tears, telling her, “I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment”.
But the actress wasn’t so welcoming. “I went full Olivia Benson on him… I was like, ‘I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything from you.… I have a dad,'” she told the outlet.
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“There was something about loyalty. I wanted to be loyal to Mickey,” she acknowledged.
Now 30 years on, she has since formed a bond with Sardelli and his daughters, even holding a private screening of the documentary for them, which they wept at.
But the bond didn’t come easy, with the actress reckoning with the fact she was “living a lie my entire life”.
Eventually, she came to the realisation her mother had done what she did in order to provide a stable home for her young daughter.
“I grew up where I was supposed to, and I do know that everyone made the best choice for me,” she said, “I’m Mickey Hargitay’s daughter – that is not a lie.”
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Despite not getting the chance to know her mother as intimately as she did her father, she says that all it takes to connect with her is to “look in the mirror… She’s with me still.”
Mariska describes Mansfield as an intelligent and loving woman and mother, as well as being a sex symbol.
“She was just so ahead of her time. She was an inspiration, she had this appetite for life, and I think I share that with her,” she told People in 2018.
In the Vanity Fair piece, she opened up about her like never before, speaking of the real impact of growing up the daughter of a Hollywood bombshell.
She grew up mortified by her mother’s blonde bimbo image, most of all her fake breathy voice, saying “it used to just flip me out. I’d think, Why is she talking like that? That’s not real.”
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Mickey would always assure her, saying “She wasn’t like that at all. She was like you. She was funny and irreverent and fearless and real.”
But Mansfield’s legacy continued to impact the actress, with Mariska recalling, ”I just wanted my mum to be like the other mums! Like, Why are you always in a bathing suit? Why so much breast? I just wanted a maternal mother image… I was embarrassed by the choices that she made.”
One of the most famous images of her mother – sitting alongside Sophia Loren as the Italian actress side-eyed her breasts popping out of her gown – had Mariska admitting, ”That was a rough one. To see another woman look at your mum like that was excruciating for me as a little girl.”Â
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It led her to go down a different path, growing up as a tomboy and later influencing the characters she would play as an actress.
”I didn’t want to be that girl, and I was judgmental about it. That’s the honest answer,” she admitted.
Mariska is best known for playing television’s longest-running character, Olivia Benson, a Violent Crimes detective in Law and Order: SVU for 26 years, a choice she finds “ironic”.
“I’ve had so much strife and turmoil with this word mother – and here I was, this iconic mother figure in the culture.”
Now 61, Mariska is a mother herself, having settled down and grown her family in an unconventional way.
She met her husband, actor Peter Hermann, on the set of SVU in the early 2000s, marrying him in 2004.
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They welcomed their son in 2006 before going on to adopt her next two children, a daughter and a son, both born and adopted in 2011.
Living with the loss of her mother, yet her memory being very much alive in both home and career environments, has created a unique way to deal with loss for Mariska.
“In my life, certainly I’ve tried to avoid pain, loss, feeling things. But I’ve learned instead to realÂly lean into it, because sooner or later you have to pay the piper,” she said.
“I’m not saying it’s easy, and it certainly hasn’t been for me… There’s been a lot of darkness. But on the other side things can be so bright.”
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