"Never spoke of it again" - Mariska Hargitay reflects on confronting father about her biological dad

Law and Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay revealed a painful and personal chapter in her life, learning that her father, Mickey Hargitay, wasn't her biological father. The actress revealed this in an interview with Alex Cooper on the Call Her Daddy podcast, ahead of the release of her HBO documentary My Mom Jayne.

She revealed that after she confronted her father, they never spoke of it again:

“I pretended that I believed him, and we never spoke of it again.”

On the podcast, she talked about how she came to terms with the truth, faced her father, and ultimately came to terms with a reality that destroyed her identity.

Mariska Hargitay, who was only three when her mother, 1950s movie star Jayne Mansfield, passed away in a terrible vehicle accident in 1967. Mariska was raised by Mansfield's then-husband, Mickey Hargitay, a Hungarian bodybuilder, and for many years, she thought he was her biological father. However, when she was 25, while visiting the home of a collector who had amassed her mother's artefacts, the truth suddenly came to light.

Mariska Hargitay said:

"I had been invited to this guy named Sabin Gray's house, and he was head of the Jayne Mansfield fan club, and he was this lovely guy and just obsessed with Jayne and loved her so much and was a huge collector of memorabilia and movie posters and anything related to her."

She continued:

"That was hard for me at that age to sort of understand. He's showing me all these photos, he's showing me, whatever it is, dresses that she had that he collected, earrings that she wore, things from movies, from the movie set, props or whatever and then he says to me, 'Do you want to see a picture of Nelson?' And I just looked at him, and this jolt went through my body, and I said, 'Who's Nelson?' and then I knew in one second."

That "Nelson" was Nelson Sardelli, a 90-year-old Brazilian-born comedian and performer with Italian ancestry who had dated Jayne Mansfield in the early 1960s following her divorce from Mickey in 1962. According to Woman's World, the divorce wasn't formalized until 1964, just after Jayne discovered she was expecting Mariska.

In 1963, Hargitay filed for divorce, which was granted in 1964. Hargitay later married Ellen Siano, and Mansfield married director Matt Cimber.

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Mariska Hargitay was left heartbroken after learning

Disoriented by the weight of what she had just discovered, Mariska Hargitay drove aimlessly after leaving the collector's house in a daze. She said:

"And I just really thought my life was over. I mean, I remember leaving and driving to my brother's house, and I thought I was gonna crash my car 'cause I was so not present. I was totally dissociated and out of my body, and I got to my brother's house. I didn't even know how I got there, but I knew that I shouldn't be driving."

After speaking to Zoltan, one of her brothers, who had no idea of her parentage, Mariska Hargitay stormed to meet Mickey to confront him. She said:

"I was hysterically crying and in a state and hear about this metaphor: My dad was building me, physically building me, a house, so I drive up to the house that he is building me and confront him, and he was like, 'What? What are you talking about? Are you crazy? That's so not true.'"

Mariska Hargitay recalled Mickey denying and added:

"He kept saying, 'You look like my father, you look exactly like my father. You're a Hargitay to the end,' and the irony is that I'm more like my dad than anyone in our whole family. I am mini Mickey. And so it was just a very extraordinarily painful moment."

She decided to spare Mickey from more suffering after seeing how hurt he was.

"I was so overwhelmed and I was 'me, me, me, oh my gosh, my life is over,' and then looking at this man who's been nothing but loving to me, and nothing but this amazing father to me and I saw his pain, and I said [to myself], 'It doesn't matter what I feel. I love him and we're done here. We're done here.'"

Mariska Hargitay thanked him for telling her and pretended to believe him and they never spoke of it again.

"And so I said, 'Okay, thank you for telling me,' and I pretended that I believed him and we never spoke of it again."

Mariska recalled that before he passed away in 2006, Mickey continued to make jokes about the incident. Mariska Hargitay said:

"'Remember when you thought that crazy thing?' and I'd go, 'I know, wasn't that nuts?'"

She made peace with her discovery:

"I don't know. I'll never know. I think that he integrated it [like] 'this is my new reality.' He made a choice, and that was his new truth and whether it's true or not emotionally, it was his truth. I understand it because I have two adopted kids, and they are no different, no different than my biological son, and so I go, 'I get it.' It didn't matter. It doesn't matter."

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Meeting her biological father

Mariska Hargitay later went on to meet Nelson at the age of 30 and reconnected with him. She revealed this in an interview with Vanity Fair.

“I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment. It wasn’t a fairy-tale scene for Hargitay, though. 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.' There was something about loyalty. I wanted to be loyal to Mickey.”

Despite the fact that Mickey Hargitay was not her biological father, Mariska made it clear that he was her father in every way. In the same interview, Mariska Hargitay made the following statement clear:

“I’m Mickey Hargitay’s daughter — that is not a lie. He was my superhero.”

She continued:

“This documentary is kind of a love letter to him, because there’s no one that I was closer to on this planet. They are my kids. Now I understand so much, and, boy, is it sweet.”

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My Mom Jayne premieres on 27 June 2025 on HBO.

Stay tuned to Soap Central for more information.