Who is Mariska Hargitay’s Birth Father, Nelson Sardelli?
Both in her upcoming documentary My Mom Jayne, and a recent episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, actress Mariska Hargitay, 61, opened up about finding out that Mickey Hargitay — the ex-husband of her mother, Jayne Mansfield, who raised Mariska and her siblings after her mother’s untimely death in 1967 — was not her actual biological father. The Law and Order: SVU actress only discovered that Nelson Sardelli was her birth father after going through some of her mother’s memorabilia.
According to US Magazine, Hargitay said after finding Sardelli’s name among her mother’s things, “I knew in one second. 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?’ I saw the blood drain out of his face and he sort of panicked and turned white and he said, ‘Oh, it’s probably not true, it’s probably not true.’ And that’s when I knew.”
She confronted Hargitay about the revelation, which he denied, telling her she was “a Hargitay to the end.”
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“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,” she continued. “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.”
Though many of us are familiar with Mickey Hargitay, a Hungarian-born professional bodybuilder who once won the Mr. Universe title, we’re likely less familiar with Sardelli.
Who is Nelson Sardelli?
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Nelson Sardelli is best known as a Las Vegas entertainer. He was born on September 20, 1934 in Brazil, from parents who immigrated from Italy. When he was a young adult, he worked for General Motors and moved to Michigan. However, when layoffs hit the auto industry, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and often taught other soldiers how to dance. After completing his service, he started pursuing dance here and there, attending Arthur Murray’s dance school and performing at the Old Mill Tavern.
Eventually, he was led to Las Vegas and performed there for many years. He opened for Judy Garland and became a regular at the Flamingo. In 1963, he dated Mansfield and they almost married, waiting until her divorce from Hargitay was finalized. However, when Mansfield found out she was pregnant, she feared that an out-of-wedlock pregnancy would damage her career; so, she remained married to Hargitay for several more months, and claimed that the baby was his.
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Sardelli moved on and had three daughters with his late wife, Fledia Fay Sardelli, who died in 2012. As of now, he is 90 years old, still living in Las Vegas and is married to a woman named Lorraine. He is featured in the new documentary, My Mom Jayne, in which Mariska explores the life of the mother she barely knew. It is also her directorial debut. The film premieres HBO on June 27, 2025.
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