Mariska Hargitay has revealed a long-held household secret: the reality about her organic father.
The actress, whose mom was Jayne Mansfield, had believed for years that her father was Mickey Hargitay, the Hungarian bodybuilding champion who turned an actor. He married Mansfield in 1956.
When Mariska was solely 3, she and her mom had been concerned in a tragic automobile accident that killed Mansfield immediately. Mickey raised their three kids after Mansfield died.
“He was my every thing, my idol. He liked me a lot, and I knew it,” she advised Vanity Fair. “I additionally knew one thing else — I simply didn’t know what I knew.”
Actually, she didn’t know the reality till she was in her 20s. Throughout a short time in 1963-64, Mansfield filed for divorce from Mickey and started relationship Italian entertainer Nelson Sardelli. Nevertheless, Mickey and Mansfield reconciled months earlier than Mariska’s beginning.
Mariska had at all times believed one thing felt totally different between her and her siblings (Jayne Marie, Zoltan and Mickey Jr.), and when she was in her 20s, she noticed a photograph of Sardelli that confirmed her emotions. She says she knew straight away that he was her organic father. When she requested Mickey, he denied it, and so they by no means spoke of it once more.
When she was 30, Mariska traveled to Atlantic Metropolis to see Sardelli carry out. After she launched herself, she mentioned, he turned emotional and advised her, “I’ve been ready 30 years for this second.”
“I went full Olivia Benson on him,” she mentioned of her response. “I used to be like, ‘I don’t need something, I don’t want something from you. … I’ve a dad.’ There was one thing about loyalty. I needed to be loyal to Mickey.” (Mickey died in 2006.)
She added that she struggled with “understanding I’m dwelling a lie my total life.”
Mariska in the end turned shut with Sardelli and his daughters. She additionally realized that her mother went again to Mickey as a result of she felt that being with him could be higher for her daughter.
“I grew up the place I used to be imagined to, and I do know that everybody made your best option for me,” she mentioned. “I’m Mickey Hargitay’s daughter — that isn’t a lie.”
The Regulation & Order: SVU star additionally opens up about this revelation in her new documentary My Mother Jayne, which premiered Saturday on the Cannes Movie Competition and debuts June 27 on HBO/HBO Max.