delga | { London & Mariska Hargitay}

Explosions in London. I hope every one who is out there is safe. xxx

ETA: And the Prime Minister returns.

All about my mother

She won a Golden Globe for her role in the hit show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, but can Mariska Hargitay ever escape from the shadow of her mother, Jayne Mansfield? By Sue Corrigan

April 3rd 2005

It must be galling for American actress Mariska Hargitay that no matter what she achieves in her life and career, she will always be linked in the public mind with a tragic accident that happened when she was just three years old.

Hargitay, now 41, stars as Detective Olivia Benson in Five’s hit television programme Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit, a role which has just won her a Golden Globe award as Best Actress in a Drama Series.

She dominates the small screen with her portrayal of a tough, smart, committed member of New York City’s elite Special Victims Unit, which investigates horrific sex crimes. Yet nothing in the programme’s scripts can match the real-life drama of Hargitay’s early childhood, and in particular the tragedy that occurred on a lonely country road in the southern American state of Louisiana in the early hours of June 29, 1967.

The little girl was sound asleep in the back seat of a limousine with her two older brothers. Also in the car was her mother, the Fifties Hollywood sex siren Jayne Mansfield, then 34, and her new boyfriend, lawyer Sam Brody.

At 2.30am, and in thick fog, the speeding car crashed into the back of a lorry. Mansfield, famous for her platinum blonde locks, voluptuous cleavage and brassy exhibitionism, was decapitated, as was Brody.

Though badly injured, Hargitay and her brothers all survived. They were told of their mother’s death by their father, Hungarian-born body-builder and one-time Mr Universe Mickey Hargitay, with whom they went to live.

‘In some ways, being the daughter of a Hollywood icon has been a constant burden,’ Hargitay admits. ‘I used to hate constant references to my mum, because I wanted to be known for myself.’

As these references almost always included details of Mansfield’s grisly end – still one of the most shocking deaths in Hollywood history – this must have added greatly to Hargitay’s unhappiness, particularly in her late teens when she was just beginning her career as an actress, and now she admits to ‘blocking it all out’.

At 22, she had a long-delayed reaction to the tragedy, suddenly plunging into months of severe depression and constant weeping. She managed to pull herself out of it, but refused for many years afterwards ever to talk publicly about her mother. ‘I don’t want to spend my life defending her,’ she said in a 1992 interview. But then, just before she began filming for the first series of SVU, a spin-off from the original Law & Order, she went on a long trip to India.

‘It changed me profoundly,’ she says. ‘It was such an education to me, and had such an impact on my spiritual life

‘I learned so much about God, so much about flow and acceptance. The more you accept, the more you let go. I think that’s the big secret.’

As a result – and perhaps as a result of her own professional success – Hargitay is now happy to talk about her mother, and reflect on the way in which Mansfield flaunted her body in the pursuit of fame.

Mansfield grew up in a small town south of Dallas, Texas. She first married at 17, and moved to Los Angeles when she was 20. She was determined to be a movie star, and famously brought herself to the attention of the town’s powerbrokers by diving into a pool at a celebrity party and losing her bikini top. At a time in which women’s vital statistics were openly leered over and could make or break an aspiring actress’s career, Mansfield’s 40-18-36 combination was a passport to instant stardom.

By the time she was 24, she’d been in a handful of B movies, but on the covers of more than 500 magazines. Although reputed to have an IQ of more than 160 and able to speak five languages, Mansfield was happy to present herself as a bimbo. But Hargitay says that the only picture she has of her mother ‘as a star’ is a Life magazine cover with the caption ‘Hollywood’s smartest dumb blonde’.

‘My mother was ahead of her time,’ Hargitay proclaims proudly. ‘She was the original wonder woman, a role model. She had a career, she had five children. She was sexy, she was musically talented and she had an amazingly high IQ. She had a zest for life, and lived every minute to the fullest. She did it all.

‘She was such a fun mother,’ says Hargitay, ‘and I can remember her sunny smile. She was also sentimental. Her charm bracelet, which is one of my most prized possessions, is made up of gold hearts and figurines to commemorate every important event in her life, such as the births of her five children.’

Hargitay was the fourth of Mansfield’s five children, and her youngest daughter. Just after she was born, though, Mansfield’s highly publicised marriage to Mickey Hargitay – the second of her three husbands, but reputedly the great love of her life – fell apart. It was he who had the words ‘I Love You Jayne’ tiled into the floor of their mansion’s pink, heart-shaped pool in Beverly Hills.

Fortunately for Mansfield’s bereaved children, [Mickey] Hargitay provided a stable, loving home for them with his third wife, Ellen, and an extended family of step-brothers and sisters. Summer school holidays were also spent away from Beverly Hills, visiting her father’s impoverished Hungarian relatives, which clearly helped the young Mariska keep a healthy sense of perspective.

‘When kids at my school used to expect to get a BMW on their 16th birthday, I wanted to say, “Have you been to Hungary lately?” Growing up, I used to say to my parents that if anything ever happened to them, I would move to Hungary and live with my aunt Eva, because her family was so close.’

Hargitay says that, initially, she did not plan to become an actress – partly because she was ‘so sick of people asking me if I planned to follow in my mother’s footsteps’ – but at 15, she was cast in a school play, and soon after decided to enrol in acting classes at the University of California.

Tall and slim, with great cheekbones and a dark-eyed intensity, Hargitay today looks far more like a central European beauty than a classic American sex bomb. And, she says, that suits her fine.

‘When I was younger, I used to deliberately avoid sexy roles, and even lost a part once when I refused to dye my hair blonde. The producer sacked me, but I wanted to stay away from sexual roles. I shied away because of my mother. I played lots of tomboys wearing flannel shirts and boots.’

She has never taken her clothes off on screen, and in her early twenties, even demanded – successfully – that a nude scene be cut from the script of what was only her second movie. Although she has appeared in several films, including Leaving Las Vegas, her future now seems securely bound up in television. As well as six years in SVU - one of America’s highest-rating prime-time police dramas – her other TV credits include ER, Seinfeld and Thirtysomething.

With a lot of hard work – and now, a Golden Globe award for acting tucked tightly under her arm – Mariska Hargitay has, it seems, finally emerged from her mother’s long shadows. [ END ]

Accompanying pictures: Mariska, Jayne Mansfield, Mariska's family and Benson. The last picture was too big to scan in one go so you have two halves, lol.