Mariska Hargitay Reveals Painful Moment She Confronted Her Dad About Her Biological Father

For most of her life, Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay believed she was the daughter of famed bodybuilder and actor Mickey Hargitay and Hollywood icon Jayne Mansfield. But in a revealing new interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, the Emmy-winning actress shared a deeply personal story: the emotional moment she confronted Mickey Hargitay about discovering he was not her biological father—and the love that ultimately transcended the truth.

Hargitay, 61, sat down with host Alex Cooper on Wednesday, June 25, and described in raw detail the moment her world was turned upside down. The revelation came after a visit to a collector’s home filled with memorabilia from her late mother. While there, she came across the name of Italian comedian and singer Nelson Sardelli—someone she recognized on a level she couldn’t immediately explain.

“I knew in one second,” Hargitay recalled. “I don’t know [how]. I think my whole life, all the millions of moments… little fragments of a memory of a moment of things I caught that went into my subconscious. Then I said, ‘Who’s Nelson?’”

A photograph of Sardelli solidified what her instincts were already telling her: He was her biological father.

The weight of that knowledge brought her to her brother’s house first, seeking validation or clarity. But she didn’t find it.

“I went to my brother’s house first and asked him if he knew, and he said he didn’t,” she told Cooper. “And I’m very, very, very close with my brother—and he didn’t.”

Still overwhelmed, Hargitay then drove to see her father, Mickey Hargitay, who had raised her and her siblings—Mickey Jr. and Zoltán—after their mother’s tragic death in a car accident in 1967. What she found when she arrived was more than symbolic: Mickey was physically building her a house.

“I drive up to the house that he is building me and confront him,” she said, her voice filled with the weight of the memory.

The confrontation was intense. Mariska, in tears, presented what she had just learned. But Mickey responded with firm denial.

“He was like, ‘What are you talking about? Are you crazy? That’s so not true,’” she said.

Despite the rejection of her claim, what followed showed a deeper layer of their relationship—one not based solely on blood, but on something far more profound.

“He kept saying, ‘You’re a Hargitay to the end,’” she recalled. “The irony is that I’m more like my dad than anyone in our whole family. I am mini-Mickey. So it was just a very extraordinarily painful moment.”

It was, she said, the moment she truly became an adult.

“I say that this is the moment that I became an adult and it’s so visceral for me because I was in so much pain. I was so overwhelmed,” she shared. “I just really thought my life was over. The one thing I did have, the one thing that I was rooted in, the one thing that was my constant, was no longer mine. My identity was just smashed.”

Yet in that moment of emotional devastation, something shifted. Mariska saw the fear and hurt in her father’s eyes.

“I saw the blood drain out of his face and he sort of panicked and turned white,” she said. “And that’s when I knew.”

What followed wasn’t a dramatic unraveling of their relationship. Instead, it was an intentional act of love and protection—for both of them.

“It doesn’t matter what I feel, I love him,” she said quietly. “And we’re done here, we’re done here. I pretended that I believed him, and we never spoke of it again.”

It’s not the first time Hargitay has spoken publicly about Nelson Sardelli. In a Vanity Fair interview, she revealed that the realization struck her while surrounded by her mother’s history and image. But this new conversation offers a much more intimate view into how that truth reshaped her inner world—and how she chose to hold onto love rather than fracture her family further.

The story adds a new dimension to the Emmy-winning actress’s already complex and storied life. Known to millions as Olivia Benson, the tenacious and compassionate detective on Law & Order: SVU, Hargitay has long been an advocate for survivors of trauma, founding the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004 to support victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Behind her public image, though, is a woman who has quietly carried the weight of personal tragedy and family secrets—from the sudden death of her mother at age 3, to the redefinition of her paternal identity decades later.

And yet, what remains clear is her unwavering capacity for love.

In the end, Mariska Hargitay chose connection over confrontation, identity over bloodlines, and healing over resentment. It’s a story not just of discovery and loss, but of what it truly means to be family.

As she told Cooper in closing: “It’s not about biology. It’s about who shows up.”