At the very start of My Mom Jayne, producer and director Mariska Hargitay lays out the basic facts, as she knows them, about her parents, siblings and early childhood.
Hargitay has only the vaguest memories of her mother, Jayne Mansfield, the sex-symbol movie star who died in a 1967 car crash, at age 34, when Hargitay, one of her mother’s five children, was only 3. Hargitay was raised by her father, who also was a celebrity of the 1950s: He was Mickey Hargitay, a former Mister Universe … and the only parent young Mariska ever really knew.
One method Hargitay uses to unlock her family secrets is to do the research she had previously avoided. She reads celebrity tell-all biographies and magazine articles, and collects as many of the existing TV and movie appearances, and recorded interviews, as she can.
Mansfield was raised in Texas, played classical piano and violin and spoke several languages. She married young, and persuaded her then-husband to move with her to Los Angeles, to pursue her dream of a career in show business. He didn’t last long, and neither did their marriage. But Mansfield persisted — though her plans for being a serious actor were affected by the way some people responded to her looks, and especially to her very curvy figure.
