Mariska Hargitay's HBO documentary about her late mother, Jayne Mansfield, includes many bombshell revelations.
Not only does My Mom Jayne reveal that Mariska's father, long believed to have been Jayne's ex-husband Mickey Hargitay, is instead Italian singer Nelson Sardelli, but it also includes the moment she discovered she was left at the scene of the car crash which killed her mom.
Fatal car crash
The Law & Order: SVU star was only three years old when, in 1967, the car her mother was traveling in crashed head-on at high speed into the back of a tractor-trailer in Biloxi, Mississippi.
The crash instantly killed a 34-year-old Jayne along with her attorney, Sam Brody, and their driver, Ronnie Harrison, who was 20 at the time.
© Getty ImagesMariska and her brothers, Mickey Jr. and Zoltan, were in the back of the car, and while they all escaped with minor injuries, Zoltan reveals in the documentary that Mariska was accidentally left in the car, a 1966 Buick Electra 225.
"I often think about why she didn't just stay in the backseat with us?" Zoltan says during a conversation with Mariska, recalling how their mom had been arguing with Sam, so she moved up to the front of the car with him.
© Getty Image"But I remember her comforting me, telling me I was going to be fine. 20 minutes later, half an hour, I heard her scream so loud, and that was it," Zoltan continues.
Following the crash, it was Zoltan who raised the alarm among the people trying to help after he realized that Mariska was missing.
It turns out that Mariska had been lodged under the passenger seat, but she was eventually pulled from the wreckage with a head injury.
© Getty Images"Thank God Zolie woke up," their stepmom, Ellen Hargitay, says in the film, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival on June 13 at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
In April, the actress announced that she had teamed up with HBO on the documentary My Mom Jayne, which marks her feature film directorial debut.
My Mom Jayne
© Getty ImagesSpeaking in a statement, Mariska said: "This movie is a labor of love and longing. It's a search for the mother I never knew, an integration of a part of myself I'd never owned, and a reclaiming of my mother's story and my own truth.
"I've always believed there is strength in vulnerability, and the process of making this film has confirmed that belief like never before."
© Getty Images for Tribeca FestivalSpeaking at the premiere, she told People: "This is my story to tell. I had a rough time with the fact that somebody else told it before I did, and that was the impetus of the movie – that I wanted to tell my story."
She added: "I encourage a lot of women, and men, to tell their stories... I feel like this has been sort of divinely protected, that it hasn't come out in the world. And so it's like I was protected until I was ready to tell my story."
