Mariska Hargitay revealed the identity of her biological father after “living a lie” for 30 years.
The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star, 61, confirmed to Vanity Fair in an interview published on Saturday, May 17, that her biological father is Italian singer and comedian Nelson Sardelli — not bodybuilder and actor, Mickey Hargitay, as she’d always been led to believe.
Mariska’s new documentary My Mom Jayne explores the tragic aftermath of a June 1967 car crash that killed her mother, actress Jayne Mansfield, and severely injured the future Law & Order star at age 3.
Among the revelations in the film is that, before Mariska’s birth, her mother split from then-husband Mickey — with whom she had two other children — and had a brief affair with Nelson, 90. Jayne quickly broke things off with the singer and returned to Mickey before Mariska was born. (Jayne had an older daughter, Jayne Marie, born 1950, with first husband Paul Mansfield as well as a son, Tony, born 1965, with third husband Matt Cimber following her 1964 divorce from Mickey.)
Mickey raised Mariska with her two siblings — Mickey Jr., born 1958, and Zoltán, born 1960 — and it wasn’t until she saw a picture of Nelson in her 20s that she realized the truth.
“It was like the floor fell out from underneath me,” she says in My Mom Jayne. “Like my infrastructure dissolved.”
Mariska recalled Mickey angrily insisting he was her biological father in their one and only conversation about the topic. Mickey died at age 80 in 2006.
The actress eventually met Nelson for the first time when she was 30 years old. Though Nelson told her he’d been “waiting 30 years for this moment,” Mariska remembered going “full Olivia Benson on him.” (She has played tough-as-nails NYPD detective Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit since 1999.)
“I was like, ‘I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything from you … I have a dad,’” Mariska said. “There was something about loyalty. I wanted to be loyal to Mickey.”
However, Mariska eventually mended fences with Nelson and his family. She said she ultimately came to the conclusion that she “grew up where [she] was supposed to.”
“I do know that everyone made the best choice for me,” she added. “I’m Mickey Hargitay’s daughter — that is not a lie.”
In November 2024, Mariska opened up at the Hope for Depression Research Foundation’s 18th Annual HOPE Luncheon Seminar about what it was like growing up “in a house of people dealing with the tragedy in their own way” following Jayne’s death.
“Because there was so much grief, there wasn’t room to prioritize anyone,” she explained. “We didn’t have the tools that we have now to metabolize and understand trauma.”
Mariska and husband Peter Hermann have been married since 2004 and share three children — August Miklos Friedrich, born 2006, Amaya Josephine Hermann, born 2011, and Andrew Nicolas Hermann, born 2011.
My Mom Jayne marks Mariska’s debut as documentary director. The emotional film premiered Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, where it is in contention for the L’Œil d’or (which translates from French to English as “The Golden Eye, The Documentary Prize.”).
My Mom Jayne has its TV premiere on HBO June 27.
