Mariska Hargitay’s Heartwarming Quotes About Late Mom Jayne Mansfield

Mariska Hargitay lost her mom, actress and 1960s sex symbol Jayne Mansfield, when she was just 3 years old — but her memory lives on through her words and actions.

Mansfield died at age 34 in a June 1967 car crash that left Hargitay with severe injuries. The Law & Order: SVU star opened up about the accident like never before in her 2025 documentary, My Mom Jayne, which examines the public and private life of Mansfield through never-before-seen photos and personal home movies, as well as interviews with her five children.

The late star welcomed Jayne Marie in 1950 with Paul Mansfield, Miklós in 1958 and Zoltán in 1960 with Mickey Hargitay, Tony in 1965 with Matt Cimber and Mariska in 1964. Mariska was raised by Mickey before learning the identity of her biological father, Nelson Sardelli, who had a brief fling with Jayne during a break in her relationship with Mickey.

“I’ve spent my whole life distancing myself from my mother,” Mariska said in the trailer for the June 2025 HBO Max documentary. “But I want to understand her now … I want to know her as Jayne. My mom, Jayne.”

Below, read some of Mariska’s most heartwarming quotes about her mother:

How She Processed Her Mom’s Death

“I lost my mother when I was 3 years old, and I grew up in a house of people dealing with the tragedy in their own way,” Mariska said at the 2024 Hope for Depression Research Foundation’s 18th Annual HOPE Luncheon Seminar. “Because there was so much grief, there wasn’t room to prioritize anyone. We didn’t have the tools that we have now to metabolize and understand trauma.”

Mariska also opened up to Glamour in November 2021 about how the trauma of losing her mom in childhood taught her valuable lifelong lessons.

“I think I learned about crisis very young, and I learned very young that s*** happens and there’s no guarantees, and we keep going. And then we transform it,” she told the magazine.

Jayne Mansfield holding six-weeks old Mariska Hargitay, United States, March 1964. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)

What She Remembers About Her Mom

On “Call Her Daddy” in June 2025, Mariska said she wasn’t sure what memories she actually had of Jayne.

“I have a couple of memories that — I don’t know if they’re memories or they’re photographs or they’re something that I wish happened or a fragment of a memory,” Mariska explained. “It’s been a life of longing for her and trying to reconstruct connection.”

She added, “I say in the movie, losing my mother felt like having a hole in your heart. So it’s been a life of navigating that and trying to figure [it] out.”

Her Mom’s Artistic Side

“I would say she was a kind, compassionate, funny, empathetic, ambitious woman,” Mariska told Today.com in June 2025, referring to her mom — who played violin and piano — as a musician and “an artist with a whole lot of dreams and an appetite for love.”

“I just think she was extraordinary,” Mariska said, noting Jayne was “ahead of her time.”

Mariska Hargitay at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival. Getty Images

The Significance of Her Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

“I remember when I got my star in 2011 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, thinking, like, ‘Oh, you know, it’s nice. It’s a thing that people do, oh yeah, it’s nice.’ I didn’t really know how to take it in, I guess. I kind of dismissed it, I’ll be honest with you. And then I got there that day, and when I saw my star on the ground next to her star, I was so overcome with emotion,” Mariska told Alex Cooper on “Call Her Daddy.”

“And, somehow, that moment of seeing this visual of these two stars with her name on it and my name on it, was one of the most emotionally connected moments that I’ve ever had with her,” she added. “And I tell you this, it took me by surprise to be connected with her and the stars, because it was on such a primal level and it was in my cells. It was in my cellular DNA.”

Mariska Hargitay Honored On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame held on November 8, 2013 in Hollywood, California. Getty Images

Learning of the Similarities Between Herself and Jayne Mansfield

“During the making of this film and on this journey, I’ve had so many moments where I got to see our similarity, or what I came from, and what I admire and revere and respect are the things about her that I’m in awe of and the things about her that are so similar to how I am,” Mariska said of her doc on “Call Her Daddy.” “So, in that way, it has been this gift. It’s so magnificent.”

Mariska admitted the making of the doc broke her open and made her realize things about Jayne that she wasn’t aware of.

She explained: “It was a struggle for me because there were things and decisions and choices that my mother made that were so painful for me, or I didn’t understand. I was like, ‘Why would you do that?’ Or, ‘I think you could have done it a different way,’ and maybe me not understanding and grokking the time, the ‘50s, all that stuff. And now the making of this film has reframed all of that for me.”

Getting to Know the Real Jayne Mansfield

“I was told that she was a different person behind that voice and that’s who I wanted to get to know. And, I did,” Mariska told Extra in 2025 of making My Mom Jayne. “As I say in the movie, I grew up sort of with a hole in my heart. I think any child who loses a parent or especially a mother at that age, it’s really hard to make sense of it and integrate and understand. But, as a mother of three now, I understand so much more.”

Mariska shares sons August, 18, and Andrew, 13, and daughter Amaya, 14, with her husband, actor Peter Hermann.

Mariska Hargitay is seen arriving at the “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on June 16, 2025 in New York City. Getty Images

Hearing Her Mom’s Actual Voice

Mariska said she had a “very complicated” relationship with her mother following her death, as she was so young and didn’t understand who Jayne really was as she got older.

“I think I was, you know, angry that I didn’t know the person behind the pose, if you will. You know, I felt like there’s this person and what was that voice? And, you know, we want our moms to be normal. I wanted my mom to be June Cleaver, right? I wanted just a regular mom that baked cookies and put notes in my lunch bag. And instead, I had this, you know, mom that walked around in a bikini and heels. And what is that? And why are you talking like that? So as I got older … I wanted to get to know the other parts,” Mariska told Today in June 2025.

She continued: “I remember seeing a candid photo of her that just made me go, ‘Ah, I see this other part of you.’ I want to know her instead of the pose and the sex symbol and that voice that drove me nuts because I’m like, ‘That’s not your real voice. I don’t want to know about your measurements. I want to know about what made your heart sing, what made you laugh, what made you cry, what was touching to you, what pain did you carry? What made you?’ So it was an extraordinary journey, because … the voice was a thing for me to hear her, her real voice, when she dropped down in that register, I went, ‘There you are. There you are.’”