Mariska Hargitay Was ‘Shattered’ After Learning Mickey Hargitay Wasn’t Her Biological Father

Jayne Mansfield holding six-weeks old Mariska Hargitay, United States, March 1964. — Archive Photos/Getty Images

On a June 26 appearance on The View to promote her new HBO documentary My Mom Jayne, Mariska Hargitay revealed that learning that Mickey Hargitay — her mother Jayne Mansfield‘s ex-husband and the man who raised her and her siblings after Mansfield’s tragic 1967 death — was not her biological father was a crushing experience.

“It was brutal,” the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star said. “Like I say in the film, it really collapsed me and shattered me because I identified with my father and having lost my mother so young, I just felt untethered and who did I belong to? I was like … I really had an identity crisis.”

Though Hargitay learned that her biological father was Las Vegas singer Nelson Sardelli after a chance encounter with the president of Jayne Mansfield’s fan club, Mickey Hargitay, who died in 2006 at age 80, remained convinced until the end that he was Mariska’s biological father.

Now, decades later, Hargitay reveals that she has found peace about her complex family situation. “Now it’s been really interesting because people go, ‘Don’t you feel so vulnerable?’ and I go, ‘No, I don’t.’ Now I feel whole and complete,” she said. “But also liberated. I think it was the gift of not carrying it anymore and the realization that I had that it wasn’t mine to carry. It’s been so beautiful to realize this thing that I was so afraid of or made me feel less than. Now I came out of it and go, ‘Oh, well I have two moms and two dads.’ It’s kind of a win-win situation, and this beautiful new family.”

In the end, Hargitay thinks the profoundly painful experience was also an incredibly important lesson. “So going through the fire, and, for me, breaking this generational trauma, has been so liberating. I use the word glorious because was it a bumpy ride? Very. Was it extraordinarily painful? Yes. Did I have a ton of trauma? Yes. But this is the lesson,” she said. “When we have the tolerance and the courage to look at it and know that the only way out is through, there’s such freedom, liberty, and glory on the other side.I felt unclaimed, I felt unworthy, I felt all of that.

“And then once I got the big picture, I was wrong. I didn’t have the whole story. That’s what it gave me is just having the tolerance to be curious and look at each person as a three-dimensional human being that’s trying to do the best they can.”