Mariska Hargitay Breaks Silence on Jayne Mansfield and Her Real Father in Powerful HBO Doc

After more than two decades playing Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU, actress Mariska Hargitay has become known as a fierce protector of truth and justice. But now, she’s stepping out of her iconic TV role to reveal a deeply personal truth of her own—one that she has carried in silence for decades.

In the new HBO documentary My Mom Jayne, premiering Friday on HBO and Max, Hargitay opens a long-closed chapter of her life: the true identity of her biological father. The film is a tender, soul-searching tribute to her mother, Hollywood legend Jayne Mansfield, and a candid reckoning with her own identity—one shaped by love, trauma, secrecy, and, ultimately, healing.

“I couldn’t believe that this truth, this bombshell for me, didn’t ever come to light,” Hargitay told The Hollywood Reporter. For most of her life, the actress kept a stunning family secret: the man who raised her, actor and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, was not her biological father.

Her real father, as revealed in the film, is entertainer Nelson Sardelli, who had a brief romance with Mansfield in the early 1960s. Hargitay says she learned the truth years ago but kept it private—out of loyalty, out of respect, and perhaps most of all, out of love for the man who raised her.

Now, in My Mom Jayne, Hargitay reclaims her story.

The film is not just about uncovering lineage; it is about understanding legacy. Mansfield, one of the most photographed women of the 1950s and early ’60s, was often typecast as a blonde bombshell, but Hargitay’s film challenges that narrow image. Through archival footage, deeply personal letters, and moving conversations with family members, she paints a more complex portrait of the woman behind the fame.

“I started reading these letters from people who knew her,” Hargitay explained. “One woman said she used to sit in the driveway and listen to [Mansfield] play the violin. I started really wanting to know who she was.”

The documentary was born during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when Hargitay, like many, found herself reflecting inward. The stillness gave her space to revisit memories, sift through old letters, and confront emotional truths she had kept at bay.

The result is a film that is both archival and deeply intimate. In it, Hargitay speaks with her siblings—Mickey Jr., Zoltan, and Jayne Marie Mansfield—about the memories they hold and the ones they’ve lost. She also explores her earliest recollections of her mother, who died in a car crash in 1967 when Hargitay was just three years old.

“I don’t know if [my memories] are real or something I wanted to happen,” she admits. “But I saw an old interview of myself in my twenties, talking about my mom stroking my head while I ate cereal. I spoke with such conviction.”

Making the film prompted conversations Hargitay had never had with her siblings before. Some knew about her biological father; others didn’t. When she shared her plan to go public, their initial reactions were mixed. But slowly, that changed.

“They were all like ‘What?’ at first,” she recalled. “But they said, ‘We get it. We love you. And we trust you with the story.’”

Watching the finished film together was a cathartic experience. “We started in four chairs,” Hargitay said. “And ended up in two, holding each other. My sister said, ‘We are four people with one heart.’”

Though intensely personal, the documentary also touches on themes that will resonate with anyone who has navigated loss, identity, or the weight of family secrets. The decision to keep her father’s identity private for so long, Hargitay said, was grounded in loyalty—especially to Mickey Hargitay, the man who stepped up as a father figure despite the truth.

“I felt because Mickey didn’t admit it to me, and because he was such a loyal human, I owed him my silence,” she said. “He was the best father.”

But with My Mom Jayne, Hargitay found the strength to tell her story on her own terms—a move she describes as liberating and necessary.

“If nobody [else] sees this film, mission accomplished,” she said. “I did it for myself. I did it for them. I did it for healing.”

And in telling that story, she has given not just her family—but her audience—a deeper understanding of a woman often reduced to a stereotype, and of the daughter who found herself through understanding her.

My Mom Jayne premieres June 28 on HBO and will be available to stream on Max.