Warning: This article discusses sexual assault.
Mariska Hargitay has played Olivia Benson on the crime drama Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit since the show first aired in 1999.
The Emmy and Golden Globe-awarded actress has made a career out of supporting fictional sexual abuse survivors in the longest-running prime time TV show in the US.
Behind the scenes, Hargitay has also devoted much of her life to helping real-life victims through the foundation she founded in 2004. But it was not until this year that she revealed she was sexually assaulted by a male friend more than 20 years ago.
Here’s how the TV icon has taken her own personal experiences, and her public platform, and channelled them into helping others.
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Early life
Mariska Hargitay was born on January 23, 1964, to Hollywood actress and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield and her husband, actor and former Mr Universe Mickey Hargitay.
Their union, which also produced Mariska’s two older brothers, Miklos, who is known as Mickey, and Zoltan, ended soon after her birth.
On June 29, 1967, a driver was taking Mansfield between work engagements when it ran up the back of a slow-moving trailer truck that was spraying for mosquitoes.
The force of the collision killed Mansfield, 36, her boyfriend and the driver.
Hargitay, then three, Mickey, eight, and Zoltan, six, were lying asleep in the backseat of the car and survived, though Hargitay was left with a zigzag scar down one side of her head.
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Dealing with tragedy
Hargitay told Glamour in 2021 the death of her mother at such a young age and in such traumatic circumstances had affected her life and touched on the symptoms of childhood trauma.
“I clearly was in that frozen place for a lot of my childhood – of trying to survive, actually trying to survive,” she said.
“My life has been a process of unpeeling the layers and trust and trusting again.
“I think I learned about crisis very young, and I learned very young that s–t happens and there’s no guarantees, and we keep going. And then we transform it.
“That’s been kind of my superpower, and the gift of having trauma early in life. I’ve spent the last 50… sort of trying to figure out what happened and why, and what am I supposed to do with it?”
After the tragedy, Mariska and her brothers went to live with their father and his third wife in LA.
Hargitay credited her father with giving a normal childhood. While at school, she joined the swim team, ran cross-country and played volleyball.
“I learned very young that s–t happens and there’s no guarantees”
But she also caught the acting bug early and after being crowned Miss Beverly Hills 1982, she went to drama school.
She started her career in music videos and bit parts in film and TV shows before winning a recurring role in soap opera Falcon Crest.
She followed this with various roles but found it hard to overcome comparisons with her famous mother.
Star turn
Her big break didn’t come until she was 35, when she won the role of Detective Olivia Benson in the Law and Order spinoff that first aired in 1999.
It was later revealed six actresses and actors vied for the roles of Benson and her partner Detective Elliot Stabler before the series creator Dick Wolf handpicked Hargitay and Christopher Meloni after watching them audition together.
Hargitay moved from LA to New York to prepare for the role, where she started visiting police stations and met a real-life SVU detective.
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She also met representatives from a sexual assault and violence intervention program, which trains volunteer rape crisis counsellors.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about how I wanted to merge this detective, who had an investigative mind, with learning how survivors needed to be met,” she said.
So she underwent 40 hours’ training to become a counsellor.
The show was a hit, but soon the line between fact and fiction blurred as viewers started writing to Hargitay about the abuse they had suffered.
Working with survivors
In 2004, Hargitay founded Joyful Heart Foundation to heal, educate and empower survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse through fundraising and other efforts.
She told Glamour in 2021, “Joyful Heart was my response. That’s what the foundation has been about – giving back possibility.”
Among its work was providing healing and wellness kits for women living in LA’s domestic violence shelters and funding therapeutic programs for women and children.
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The Joyful Heart Foundation was worked into episodes of the TV show she stars in and her character started wearing a pendant available on its website.
Later, Hargitay became aware that thousands of rape kits do not get tested in the US. She went on to produce the 2018 documentary, I Am Evidence, about the subject.
In January 2024, Hargitay revealed for the first time that she was raped by a male friend when she was in her 30s in an essay for People.
“It wasn’t sexual at all. It was dominance and control. Overpowering control,” she wrote.
“He grabbed me by the arms and held me down. I was terrified. I didn’t want it to escalate to violence. I now know it was already sexual violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent.
“I went into freeze mode, a common trauma response when there is no option to escape. I checked out of my body. I couldn’t process it. I did what I had to do to survive.”
Hargitay said for a long time, the fact her attacker was a friend made her think she was less a victim than other women.
“Now I’m able to see clearly what was done to me,” she told People.
“That’s why I’ve talked so much about ‘acquaintance rape’, because many people still think of rape as a man jumping out of the bushes.
“I said for a long time that my hope was for people to be able to talk about sexual assault the same way they now talk about cancer.
“Tell someone you’ve survived cancer, and you’re celebrated. I want the same response for sexual assault survivors.
“I want no shame with the victim. The shame of the act belongs with the perpetrator: they’re the ones who committed the heinous, shameful act.”
Family life
Hargitay’s father died after a battle with cancer in 2006. She often pays tribute to him on social media and in interviews.
The actress, now 60, has been happily married for 20 years to Peter Hermann, a lawyer-turned-actor she met on the show when he started playing defence attorney Trevor Langan.
Hargitay gave birth to their son, August, in 2006. In 2011, they adopted two children just months apart, a daughter, Amaya, and a son, Andrew.
She continues to work on the show that made her a star, and is one of the highest paid actresses on TV.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
