May 19, 2025 11:11 AM IST
Mariska Hargitay opens up about her parents’ turbulent relationship in her new documentary, My Mom Jayne.
TV star Mariska Hargitay, daughter of the original blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield, has dropped a bombshell with a revelation that Mickey Hargitay, the man who raised her and gave her his name, was not her biological father. Mariska made these claims in her new documentary feature on her mother, My Mom Jayne.
Mariska Hargitay on her biological father
The documentary, which sees Mariska turn director, is focused on the life and death of Jayne Mansfield, and opens up a Pandora’s box about the late Hollywood icon’s life. The film premiered at the Cannea Film Festival this weekend. According to Vanity Fair, the film includes a sequence of Mariska talking about the time when her mother filed for divorce from Mickey and began a well-publicised romance with Italian entertainer Nelson Sardelli. However, she reconciled with Mickey months before Mariska’s birth.
The actor says that she was in her 20s when she was first showed a pictire of Sardelli and she ‘immediately knew’ he was her biological father. “It was like the floor fell out from underneath me,” she recalls in My Mom Jayne. “Like my infrastructure dissolved.” The actor confronted Mickey but says he denied it. The actor said she felt disappointed “knowing I’m living a lie my entire life.”
Eventually, she travelled to Italy and met Sardelli a decade later and the man broke down seeing her. Even as he cried and told her ‘I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment,’, Mariska said she lashed out at him. “I was like, ‘I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything from you.… I have a dad. There was something about loyalty. I wanted to be loyal to Mickey,” she told Vanity Fair.
About Jayne Mansfield and Mariska Hargitay
Jayne Mansfield was a Playboy playmate and actor known for her ‘dumb blonde’ roles in the 50s and 60s. She died in a car crash in 1967 at the age of 34. Mariska was 3 at the time. She was raised by Mickey. Jayne’s second husband. Mariska is best known for her role as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which she has starred in since 1999.
