A bombshell movie-star mother, with bombshell secrets

WHEN MARISKA HARGITAY WAS 3, she and two of her brothers survived the car accident that killed their mother, bombshell movie star Jayne Mansfield. The kids were asleep in the back seat; the three adults in the front—Mansfield, her companion at the time, and the car’s driver—were killed instantly. Mariska’s two brothers, injured, were carried away from the scene. It wasn’t until later that one of them, 6-year-old Zoltan, realized Mariska wasn’t with them: she was pinned beneath the passenger seat, with a head injury. If Zoltan hadn’t spoken up, Mariska might not have been found until it was too late.

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That’s just one of the details revealed in Hargitay’s touching documentary My Mom Jayne, in which the actor, now 61, summons scraps of facts and remembrances to piece together the truth about her own identity, and in the process make peace with the mother she never knew. Hargitay has known since her 20s that the man who raised her, and loved her deeply—actor and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay—was not her real father. Only now is she reckoning with the scope of that truth.