 
Say Goodbye to Hollywood By Mike Hammer Photographs by John-Francis Bourke Law and Order: SVU's Mariska Hargitay is an L.A. Woman with a New York State Of Mind.
Mariska Hargitay is a New Yorker through and through.
OK. She actually grew up 3,000 miles away and she is the picture-perfect offspring of a storybook Hollywood couple. And yeah, she really only moved there four years ago to star in yet another spectacularly successful Dick Wolfe cop-and-court drama, "Law & Order: SVU" which scores higher in the ratings than the show from which it was spun off. And we will concede that for most of her life she was the quintessential California girl who starred in track and swimming in high school and wound up studying theatre at UCLA. But these days, Mariska's way more Manhattan than Manhattan Beach.
Even the NYPD has adopted the TV cop as one of its own. "The guys have been great," she says of her new brothers in blue. "There's a precinct right across the street from my apartment and the cops are always looking out for me. I walk out the door and they always ask me what case I'm working on. Once I was in Midtown and we saw a couple in a patrol car and I needed to get downtown fast ... so I asked them for a lift. At first, the guy was like 'You know I can't do that!' Then I said: 'Who are you kidding dude, I know you're always taking [co-star Richard} Belzer wherever he needs to go - so come clean.' They treated me like one of they guys after that. It's like I grew up with them."
Which is more than 3,000 miles from the truth. Mariska's mom, Jayne Mansfield, was Hollywood's biggest blonde bombshell not named Marilyn in the '50s and early '60s. Her dad, Mickey Hargitay, was just, um, really big. The former Hungarian Olympic speed skater later went into body building - and became Mr. Universe. He then built up a little movie career of his own, and together he and Mansfield became the Brad and Jennifer of the tabloids of their time.
"I was so touched when I met the actor Phillip Bosco," she says. "I was told that he was dying to meet me, and I wasn't sure why. He pulled me aside and simply said: 'I knew your mother well.' Then he showed me some pictures of them when they worked together and I could see the emotion and affection that he had for her. I felt very close to both of them at that moment. That happens a lot. There are a lot of people I come across that have memories like that of my mother. In many ways to me, she was a super hero."
Though her mother was a star of enormous magnitude in her time, Hargitay's journey into acting had little to do with her mother's glamorous image. "I never really cared about her career," she says. "But I had a curiosity about her. I treasure the encounters like the one I had with Phillip. It's like a window into her soul. It gives me more little pieces and insights into who she was. That's the important thing."
Despite the celebrity pedigree, her father kept the Hollywood princess well-grounded and exposed her to a world that extended far beyond the San Fernando valley.
"He took us all over the world," she explains. "He was so not Hollywood. Yeah, he was an actor, but he took jobs in spaghetti westerns just so we could spend summers in Italy. Then he would take us back to Hungary when it was still an Iron Curtain country. All of this was an incredible learning experience."
Part of the experience was positive. She now is fluent in French, Italian, and Hungarian. But some of the lessons she learned were quite sobering. "Hungary was great, but there were times when you realized that things weren't the same as they were back home. You would walk the streets and there would be soldiers carrying machine guns on the corner. I used to think that was so foreign to my world in America. Now I walk around airports in New York and L.A. and I see the same thing. It's so tragic."
SMOKE - Winter, 2002/2003   |
"I was born and raised in L.A., but even before I got here, everybody assumed I was from New York," she says, with a street-smart style that smacks more of Robert DeNiro than Marina Del Ray. "I felt destined to be here. I take it as the biggest compliment that people assume that I'm from N.Y."
Tragically, Mansfield was killed in a 1967 auto accident with three-year-old Mariska miraculously emerging unhurt from the backseat. Her memories of her mom are very misty, and only brought to life by the stories she hears about her from the father she adores and the many fans, friends, and actors who still keep Mansfield alive in their hearts.