NEW YORK (NY)
People Magazine [New York NY]
November 14, 2025
By Alexandra Schonfeld
The ‘Law & Order: SVU’ star’s documentary premiered earlier this year on HBO Max
- Mariska Hargitay is sharing how her film My Mom Jayne impacted her whole family
- The documentary, which premiered earlier this year, looks at the life and legacy of her late mother Jayne Mansfield
- At the DOC NYC Visionaries Tribute Luncheon on Nov. 12, Hargitay told PEOPLE the making of the film was “a very sacred journey with my family”
Mariska Hargitay is reflecting on how My Mom Jayne impacted her family as a whole.
In her feature film directorial debut, which won Best First Documentary Feature at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards on Nov. 9, Hargitay, 61, looks at the life of her late mother Jayne Mansfield.
The film not only examines Mansfield’s expansive career in the 1950s and 1960s; it also dives into the legacy she left behind and family secrets later discovered following her tragic death in a 1967 car crash that Hargitay, then 3 years old, and two of her siblings survived.
One of those secrets, which is revealed for the first time in the film, is that her biological father is not the man who raised her, Mickey Hargitay, but rather a man named Nelson Sardelli.
And while the process of making the film certainly had a deep impact on Hargitay, who has previously called the documentary “a transformative part of my life’s work,” it has also made a lasting impression on her children.
“I think our whole family learned a lot,” Hargitay, who shares children August, 19, Amaya ,14, and Andrew, 14, with husband Peter Hermann, told PEOPLE at the DOC NYC Visionaries Tribute Luncheon on Nov. 12. “One of the things that I think it’s done for our family — [it’s] been very organizing, and for the kids who heard about pieces about this icon, this legend, to see a story… from the beginning to end, I think was really organizing, and everyone just feels so much, I think, lighter and clearer and a little bit more healed from it.”
“It’s been a very sacred journey with my family,” she concluded.
In addition to celebrating the personal project, which premiered on HBO Max in May, Hargitay is looking forward to the release of another documentary, Nuns vs. The Vatican, for which she is an executive producer. It will have its U.S. premiere on Nov. 15 as part of the DOC NYC documentary film festival.