Mariska Hargitay Reveals Family Secret In New Doc: 'Living a Lie My Entire Life'

The Law & Order: SVU star's mother Jayne Mansfield was married to Hargitay from 1958 to 1964, but had a romance with Italian entertainer Nelson Sardelli in 1963 -- after filing for divorce. She gave birth to Mariska shortly afterwards, while Mickey was always the man identified as her father.

That, however, wasn't true -- something Mariska, now 61, learned when she was in her 20s.

"He was my everything, my idol. He loved me so much, and I knew it," she told Vanity Fair about Mickey, adding that she also "knew something else -- I just didn't know what I knew."

When she saw a photo of Sardelli in her 20s, she realized that that "something else" was -- he was her bio dad.

"It was like the floor fell out from underneath me. Like my infrastructure dissolved," Vanity Fair reports she says in the doc. The publication notes the actress did confront Mickey about it at the time, but he denied it. Her mother, of course, died in a car crash when Mariska was just three, with all three of Mansfield's children -- who all survived -- in the backseat of the vehicle at the time.

She only truly learned the truth when she went to see Sardelli perform in Atlantic City when she was 30, saying he burst into tears when she introduced herself to him.

"I've been waiting 30 years for this moment," she told Vanity Fair he said to her -- with Hargitay saying she "went full Olivia Benson on him" in the moment.

"I was like, 'I don't want anything, I don't need anything from you ... I have a dad,'" she continued. "There was something about loyalty. I wanted to be loyal to Mickey."

The revelation, she said, left her feeling like she had been "living a lie my entire life."

Over time, however, she, Sardelli and her two half-sisters came to form a bond of their own, with Hargitay saying the women "wept and wept and wept" after seeing the documentary. "These two women that I love so much -- I made them secrets! It's so heartbreaking to me," shared Hargitay, recalling how she used to introduce them to others as "family friends."

"I grew up where I was supposed to, and I do know that everyone made the best choice for me," Hargitay believes now. "I'm Mickey Hargitay's daughter -- that is not a lie. This documentary is kind of a love letter to him, because there's no one that I was closer to on this planet."

Mickey passed away in 2006. Sardelli, meanwhile, is still alive, in his 90s and living in Las Vegas.