Mariska Hargitay experienced a scary incident nearly three many years ago and opened up about the way it parallels her mother Jayne Mansfield’s death.
“I used to be involved in a serious motorcycle accident once I was 34,” the Law & Order star, 61, said in an interview with The Shift published on Friday, July 25. “[That] is how old my mother was when she died. The experience was deeply painful on every level.”
Hargitay shared that following the accident, “something opened up” for her, which led her to where she is now.
“It was like I’d crossed a threshold. My trajectory was my very own, my story was my very own, with out a predetermined ending. Inside a yr, I got the role of Olivia Benson on SVU,” she continued. “I can’t help but make a connection between that moment of liberation after the accident from what I feared was my fate after which entering into this role that has change into such a profound a part of my life. It’s like I stepped out of a narrative that wasn’t mine and into my very own story.”
In June 1967, Mansfield died in a automobile accident at age 34. Mansfield was traveling with three of her kids, Mariska, Zoltan Hargitay and Mickey Hargitay Jr., to Recent Orleans from Mississippi. (Mansfield was also mother to daughter Jayne Marie Mansfield, whom she welcomed together with her first husband and son Antonio “Tony” Cimber from her third marriage.)
The family was also joined by her attorney and partner, Sam Brody, and their 19-year-old driver. The vehicle rear-ended a tractor trailer, killing the three adults within the automobile.
The actress was 3 years old on the time and has no recollection of the incident.
“I don’t remember the accident,” she told Vanity Fair in May. “I don’t even remember being told that my mother had died. I have a look at photos, and I don’t really remember anything until I used to be 5.”
Earlier this yr, Mariska opened up about her memories together with her mother and explored them in a documentary titled My Mom Jayne. The doc also examines Jayne’s public persona as an actress and sex symbol within the Nineteen Sixties, plus her private life together with her family.
“I’ve spent my whole life distancing myself from my mother,” Mariska said within the trailer for the HBO Max documentary. “But I need to grasp her now … I need to know her as Jayne. My mom, Jayne.”
Mariska later revealed that while she was working on the project, she got to see how alike she and her mom truly were.
“Through 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 got here from, and what I like and revere and respect are the things about her that I’m in awe of and the things about her which might be so much like how I’m,” she recalled on “Call Her Daddy.” “So, in that way, it has been this gift. It’s so magnificent.”
Mariska added that she used to “struggle” with “decisions” her mom made up to now, but after attending to connect together with her on a deeper level, it “reframed” her mindset.