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.
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.)
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.
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.)
