Mariska Hargitay attempts to come to terms with her late mother, Jayne Mansfield, in “My Mom Jayne,“ the new HBO Original documentary she directed and produced featuring interviews with relatives about the iconic bombshell. Hargitay, though, says she’s had her own, more recent, interaction with her mother.
“I didn’t put this in the movie, and my editor wanted to kill me because I told him too late — you never know when memories come,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “I had this beautiful dream. I never dreamt about her, except one time.
“I was still living in my house that my dad built for me on Warbler Way. I dreamt that she came to my house, and I was like, ‘What? Hi!’ I said, ‘I’m so happy you’re here. I can’t believe I get to meet you.’”
The “Law & Order: SVU” star said she had a request for her mother in the dream.
“Then I said, ‘Listen, I need you to come downstairs so you can see (the photos),’ because I had a whole wall of photos of her in my house,” she said. “But she never came downstairs.
“And I just remember going, ‘Please, I really want to show you.’ She’s like, ‘I can’t, I have to go.’ I just remember how happy I was that she came over and then I got to meet her. But it’s also very telling that she didn’t come downstairs. Maybe I’ll start to dream about her again. I hope.”
Mansfield died in a car accident at the age of 34 in 1967. Hargitay, who was born in 1964, was 25 when she discovered her biological father is Italian singer Nelson Sardelli, and not Hungarian bodybuilder, actor and one-time Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay.
“My Mom Jayne” attempts to pull back the curtain on just who Mansfield was.
“I would say she was a kind, compassionate, funny, empathetic, ambitious woman,” Hargitay told TODAY.com.
“I just think she was extraordinary,” she said, while noting her mother was “ahead of her time.”
Hargitay also said she needed to understand just who her mother was, beyond the sex symbol image she was known for by the public.
“I think I was angry that I didn’t know the person behind the pose, if you will,” she said June 26 on TODAY.
“We want our moms to be normal. I wanted my mom to be June Cleaver,” she added. “I wanted just a regular mom that baked cookies and put notes in my lunch bag, and instead I had this mom that walked around in a bikini and heels. And what is that? And why are you talking like that?”
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