Mariska Hargitay Reveals Shocking Details About Mother’s Fatal Crash

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star Mariska Hargitay has revealed a hair-raising new detail about the tragedy that blew her life apart when she was a child.

Her mother Jayne Mansfield was one of the reigning sex symbols of the 1950s, a screen siren and Playboy Playmate who with Promises! Promises! became the first star actress to feature naked in an American movie since the advent of talkies.

Jayne’s saucy career ran alongside a tempestuous personal life that included a roaring drinking problem and affairs with men as prominent as John F. Kennedy.

She was tragically killed at the age of 34 in a grisly car accident – with three of her children, including three-year-old Mariska, in the backseat.

Now Mariska, 61, has made a documentary called My Mom Jayne, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival last week and contains a shock bombshell about the crash.

In the movie, Mariska’s siblings remember that they were pulled out of the wreck and taken to safety, only to realize later that Mariska had been left behind, via People.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star Mariska Hargitay, pictured last week, has revealed a hair-raising new detail about the tragedy that blew her life apart when she was a child

Her mother Jayne Mansfield was one of the reigning sex symbols of the 1950s, a screen siren and Playboy Playmate who starred in films like Promises! Promises! 

Mariska’s brother Zoltan tells her that Jayne had initially been in the backseat of the car but moved up front with her boyfriend Sam Brody while they were arguing.

The children remained asleep in the back of the Buick Electra, where they survived the crash that killed Jayne, Sam and the driver Ronald Harrison.

‘I often think about why she didn’t just stay in the backseat with us?’ said Zoltan. ‘But I remember her comforting me, telling me I was going to be fine. Twenty minutes later, half an hour, I heard her scream so loud, and that was it.’

Zoltan, who was just shy of his seventh birthday at the time of the crash, chillingly remembered: ‘It felt like my skin didn’t move, because it was bloody all over.’

Some adults rescued Zoltan and his then eight-year-old brother Mickey Jr., but after the boys were retrieved from the scene, Zoltan realized Mariska was not with them.

Their stepmother Ellen Hargitay revealed that when Mariska was eventually found in the car, she had injured her head and was wedged under a passenger seat.

Jayne gave birth to Mariska while married to her second husband Mickey Hargitay, who raised the little girl after her mother was killed.

However, in the documentary, Mariska announces that her biological father was in fact one Nelson Sardelli, who is still alive in his 90s.

Jayne is pictured with her second husband Mickey Hargitay, her daughter Jayne Marie and her baby son Milkos in 1959, a few years before Mariska was born

Jayne’s movie roles were eclipsed by a whirlwind love life that included three failed marriages, the second of which brought her Mariska

In spite of her stardom, Jayne’s movie roles were eclipsed by a whirlwind love life that included three failed marriages, the second of which was to the Hungarian heartthrob Mickey Hargitay, who earned the bodybuilding title Mr. Universe in 1955.

One year later, Jayne saw Mickey performing backup in Mae West’s nightclub act and told the waiter: ‘I’ll have a steak and the man on the left.’

They married in 1958, with Jayne in a pink sequin bridal gown, and he promptly began appearing in her movies like Primitive Love and The Loves Of Hercules.

Offscreen their marriage was infamously turbulent, rocked by Jayne’s affair with Italian producer Enrico Bomba, which unfolded in the headlines.

By the time Jayne discovered she was pregnant with Mariska, she and Mickey had already procured a quickie divorce in Juarez, Mexico.

In order to avoid the opprobrium of having a baby out of wedlock, Jayne and Mickey briefly kept up the appearance of being married stateside, but once Mariska was born, Mickey had the Mexican divorce officially recognized by a California court.

As the years went by, Jayne’s career deteriorated and her personal life was scarred by a third divorce and a spiraling descent into alcoholism.

Reduced to playing the nightclub circuit, the woman once touted as ‘the working man’s Marilyn Monroe’ found herself staging ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ for publicity and throwing herself into drunken brawls.

Jayne’s saucy career ran alongside a tempestuous personal life that included a roaring drinking problem and affairs with men as prominent as John F. Kennedy 

With Promises! Promises! she became the first star actress to feature naked in an American movie since the advent of talkies

After Jayne’s tragic death, Mariska moved in with Mickey, who was able to provide her with a stable upbringing until she ventured into acting herself, most famously with her popular role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. 

‘I think I learned about crisis very young,’ she told Glamour while reflecting on her mother’s death: ‘and I learned very young that s*** happens and there’s no guarantees, and we keep going. And then we transform it.’

She added: ‘That’s been kind of my superpower, and the gift of having trauma early in life. I’ve spent the last 50 – how old am I? – 57, so 54 years sort of trying to figure out what happened and why, and what am I supposed to do with it?’

Mariska recalled: ‘I clearly was in that frozen place for a lot of my childhood—of trying to survive, actually trying to survive. My life has been a process of unpeeling the layers and trust and trusting again.’