This is her story.
Before she was an award- winning crusader for justice
on and off the screen,
Mariska Magdolna Hargitay didn’t want to be
Her mother was the gorgeous actress and Playboy Playmate
Jayne Mansfield. Her father was the 1955 Mr. Universe
Miklós "Mickey" Hargitay and frequently co-starred
in films with Jayne. Their love brought them 3 children
but the marriage fell apart after only 6 years.
On a June night in 1967, Jayne Mansfield was killed
in a tragic car accident. Mariska and her two older brothers
were sleeping in the backseat but survived the crash.
Raised by her father and stepmother,
and attended the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television.
Acting might have been in her blood,
but Mariska had to pay her dues just like everyone else.
When she was 20 years old, Mariska was cast as the
love interest in the music video for Ronnie Milsap’s
‘She Loves My Car.’
♪I wish she loved me the way she loves my car.♪
It wasn’t anything groundbreaking,
but it got her the exposure she needed to land her first film
the next year.
‘Things were really nice,
they were. But then he just got so weird.’
She spent the next decade bouncing around between
short-lived TV Shows and guest appearances.
She even did a season of ‘ER’ as Cynthia Hooper,
a desk clerk at Chicago’s County General Hospital.
‘I used to sell vitamins over the phone.
That's kind of in the health field, isn't it?’
In 1999, Mariska stepped out of her comfort zone for
Writer and producer Dick Wolf’s crime drama series,
had already been dominating NBC
for the past decade when Wolf announced
‘I read the script and
felt a connection to the material
unlike any other script I'd ever read.’
In preparation for her portrayal of Detective Olivia Benson,
Mariska completed 40 hours of training as a rape crisis advocate.
Within her first few years on SVU, Mariska started
to receive letters from viewers that were very different
from any fan mail she’d received before.
‘So I think that they went to this
fictionalized character that maybe was the
first person that showed empathy and compassion.’
In 2001, actor Peter Hermann took on a recurring role
as Defense Attorney Trevor Langan.
Mariska and Peter fell in love off-camera
and were married in 2004.
Armed with the statistics, compassion, and some
pseudo-cop skills, Mariska was ready
to take her activism off the page.
‘Like, do you ever feel like you are
in law enforcement sometimes?’
‘No, absolutely I feel like I do.
There have been times in my life where
I've seen something on the street and I jump in
like, 'Hey! Put that down, get in here, come here—'
And I've done it so many times.
I'm like, 'Mariska, you need to calm down.’’
In 2004, Mariska founded the Joyful Heart Foundation
to support healing among survivors and
change the conversation about rape culture in America.
Six years later, she stood before Congress to testify
against the hundreds of thousands of untested
rape kits stored in police facilities across the nation.
Shortly after her testimony, Mariska met prosecutor
Kym Worthy, and their shared cause
connected them instantly. Together, they began
working on ‘I AM EVIDENCE,’ an enraging documentary
that demonstrates how unprocessed rape kits
have affected the lives of four women.
In their research and testing of the backlogged DNA,
prosecutor Worthy discovered that there were nearly
1,000 serial rapists in Detroit, Michigan, alone.
‘This is a perfect sort of microcosm of how we
treat women, how we treat survivors. And
it sort of holds a mirror up to the country and says,
‘This is what we’re doing, so let’s change it.’’
In the background of her amazing, real-life advocacy,
her work as Detective Olivia Benson has
won her both Golden Globe and Emmy accolades.
Mariska Hargitay’s pursuit of justice—
both fictionally and actually—
has made her the driving force of SVU’s success.
Taylor Swift even named her cat after her.
If that’s not iconic, I don’t know what is.
Over her career,