Mariska Hargitay reveals the shocking truth about her biological father and childhood trauma in deeply personal documentary My Mom Jayne.
Mariska Hargitay is opening up like never before in her first documentary, My Mom Jayne—and the revelations are deeply personal. Premiering at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star’s directorial debut chronicles the life, legacy, and tragic death of her iconic mother, Jayne Mansfield, while also peeling back the curtain on a life-altering secret she’s carried for decades.
Now 61, Mariska Hargitay reveals in the documentary that she learned in her twenties that her biological father is not Mickey Hargitay, the man who raised her, but Italian singer and comedian Nelson Sardelli. This revelation rocked the actress, who says she had always idolized Mickey.
“He was my everything, my idol. He loved me so much, and I knew it,” she shared, explaining that while something always felt off, she didn’t fully understand it until she saw a photo of Sardelli in her twenties. The resemblance was undeniable. “It was like the floor fell out from underneath me. Like my infrastructure dissolved,” Mariska Hargitay says in the film.
Despite confronting Mickey about it, he denied the claim, and she never brought it up again. Mickey Hargitay died in 2006.
In 2004, Mariska Hargitay met Nelson Sardelli for the first time after attending one of his performances in Atlantic City. According to the actress, he immediately burst into tears, telling her, “I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment.” But Hargitay, channeling the strength of her SVU alter ego, Olivia Benson, made it clear she didn’t want anything from him. “I went full Olivia Benson on him,” she said in a new Vanity Fair interview. “I was like, ‘I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything from you. I have a dad.’”
Still, the emotional weight of living “a lie” for most of her life took a toll. Torn between loyalty to the man who raised her and a desire for truth, Mariska Hargitay eventually forged a bond with Nelson Sardelli and his daughters. “I grew up where I was supposed to,” she said, acknowledging the complicated feelings that came with reconciling both sides of her family.
“I’m Mickey Hargitay’s daughter — that is not a lie,” she added tearfully. “This documentary is kind of a love letter to him, because there’s no one that I was closer to on this planet.”
My Mom Jayne also explores the death of Jayne Mansfield, the 1950s and ’60s Hollywood bombshell who died in a horrific car crash in 1967 at just 34. Mariska Hargitay, who was only three at the time, was in the backseat during the crash along with her two older brothers. All three children survived, though Mariska Hargitay was nearly left behind by first responders until her brother spoke up.
The documentary aims to paint a fuller picture of Jayne Mansfield, beyond her glamorous blonde image. “She never got to make the kind of art she wanted to,” Mariska Hargitay said, adding that she longed to understand her mother as more than just a public persona. “What made her tick, what made her afraid, what was her pain and her joy… all of that.”
My Mom Jayne is set to premiere on HBO and HBO Max on June 27.
