Mariska Hargitay sees her mom as ‘a hero’ after 'My Mom Jayne'

Mariska Hargitay sat down for an interview with the Los Angeles Times where she opened up about the documentary, My Mom Jayne.

It explores the life of her mother, Jayne Mansfield, who worked as an actress in the 1950s as well as the 1960s.

Born Vera Jayne Palmer, she was killed in a vehicle collision in 1967 while Hargitay and two of her siblings were in the car.

About the medium of the project, she explained, “I think I'm a better filmmaker than writer. I'm very passionate about documentaries. It's a very visceral way of grokking a story for me, and I've had such powerful experiences with them. One of the things that was so important to me in this was to have everyone's own words in the story because it's their story as much as it is mine. It just felt like the most authentic way to approach the storytelling.”

The actress also discussed the process of giving her mother grace when exploring her life, “I think that as little girls, we all want our parents to be this certain way. For me, I wanted a normal mom that stayed home and baked cookies and didn't run around in heels, in a bikini. I was like, ‘Why can't you be normal?’ So not understanding and having that myopic view or wish now, being 61 — I have three children, I have a career, I have a foundation, I have a husband.”

She continued, “There is so much to manage, and it is hard to do it all with grace and elegance and love. I don't know how I do it sometimes, other than I have a lot of help and an amazing husband. I got married at 40. I had my first child at 42. I was cooked; I was an adult. I had learned so much. I had so much life experience.”

“As I say in the film, she [Mansfield] was a baby. She was 16 years old when she got pregnant, and I will never know the story of how she got pregnant. But what she had to navigate alone with a child — I'll tell you this, if I was pregnant and living in Dallas, Texas, I don't know that I would have gone to L.A. by myself. I wanted to go to New York for 10 years before I left, and the reason I left is because I had a job,” Hargitay remarked.

She added, “And this girl got in the car with her 3-year-old [Hargitay's sister, Jayne Marie Mansfield] and said, "We're going to California." And the husband said, "I'm out." But she said, "I'm doing this." I look at her a little bit like a superhero and go, "I don't think I could have done that." The process of making this film has been so extraordinary to me and totally reframed the narrative for me. I was wrong to go into this film feeling one way about Nelson and thinking he abandoned me, he left my mother, he knew she was pregnant. And after all of that, to be left with: He did the right thing. He made the ultimate sacrifice for me.”

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