Mariska Hargitay revealed in May 2025 that dad Mickey Hargitay wasn’t her biological father.
The actress’ late mother, Jayne Mansfield, had a brief affair with Italian singer and comedian Nelson Sardelli — who she confirmed to Vanity Fair is her real father. When Mariska was in her 20s, she saw a photo of Sardelli for the first time and felt a “jolt” before confirming the truth.
“I knew in one second,” she recalled during a June 2025 appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “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?’”
Mariska’s relationship with her family was further explored in the My Mom Jayne documentary, which premiered via HBO in June 2025.
Keep scrolling to read the actress’ honest quotes about her biological father:
What to Know About Mariska Hargitay’s Surprise Biological Father
Their 1st Meeting
Mariska didn’t meet Sardelli until she was 30 years old. She went to watch him perform at the time, and they crossed paths after his show.
“I went full Olivia Benson on him,” Mariska said during her Vanity Fair interview, referencing her Law and Order: SVU character. “I was like, ‘I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything from you … I have a dad.’ There was something about loyalty. I wanted to be loyal to Mickey.”
Accepting Her Family
Initially, Mariska admittedly had struggles accepting that she was “living a lie” for most of her life — but made peace with the truth after bonding with Sardelli and his family.
“I grew up where I was supposed to, and I do know that everyone made the best choice for me. I’m Mickey Hargitay’s daughter — that is not a lie,” she said during the same Vanity Fair interview. “This documentary is kind of a love letter to him, because there’s no one that I was closer to on this planet.”
Sardelli’s daughters, Mariska’s sisters, watched My Mom Jayne with her and “just wept,” the actress continued.
“These two women that I love so much — I made them secrets! It’s so heartbreaking to me,” she said, explaining in her Vanity Fair profile that they were often dubbed as “family friends” in public. “I’m not good with lies. So, I also made this movie to unburden all of us.”
‘My Mom Jayne’
Mariska spoke about Sardelli in the June 2025 documentary.
“It was like the floor fell out from underneath me. Just the bottom dropped out of everything,” she recalled when discussing the truth about her parentage. “It was like my infrastructure dissolved and life as I knew it was irrevocably changed.”
Mariska Hargitay’s Heartwarming Quotes About Late Mom Jayne Mansfield
She also said on the Today show that Sardelli was “thrilled” with her documentary.
“He’d been living with this secret, too, all these years,” Mariska shared during her June 2025 interview. “My sisters were over the moon because, obviously, they’d been kept a secret. My [other] siblings were hesitant and like, ‘Wait, what? Why are you digging up the past?’ We talked about it more, and they said, ‘Look, we support you. We trust you, and it’s your story to tell.’”
Keeping the Secret
The actress said it was a “miracle” the truth about her paternity was never publicly revealed.
“I still can’t believe that the story has never come out,” she told Entertainment Weekly in June 2025. “I still believe that somehow my story was divinely protected, so that I got to tell it on my timing.”
She added, “As I got to know Nelson, as he explained to me what happened, it just became a much more three-dimensional story. I realized that everyone’s doing the best they can. It wasn’t so black and white anymore to me.”