After 26 seasons on SVU: Special Victims Unit, it’s hard to think of actress Mariska Hargitay as anyone other than butt-kicking New York detective Olivia Benson.
And when you see the work she does in real life to help victims of sexual and domestic violence, the lines blur even more between fact and fiction!
This year marks 21 years since Mariska, 61, started the Joyful Heart Foundation, an organisation that supports survivors healing from, and advocates for the end of, sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse in the United States.
“Joyful Heart was my response to reading the letters that I received from survivors when I started on SVU back in 1999,” explains Mariska.
“It’s my response to learning the statistics of sexual violence and just being slack-jawed that everybody wasn’t talking about all of these issues.”
The logistics of starting her real-life justice crusade weren’t without their challenges.
“I knew nothing about how to start a foundation,” says Mariska. “I was an actor on a TV show.
“Doors were shut. People were like, ‘If it’s not cancer or diabetes, we’re not interested. Sexual assault? We don’t talk about that.’ I was like, ‘But this is as big as cancer.’”
Luckily, the actress persisted and, over the years, her growing tenacity for justice has known no bounds.
In 2017, Mariska went all the way to the US Congress, teaming up with Michigan prosecutor Kym Worthy to work through an overwhelming backlog of rape kits that had gone unprocessed by police. The results were an astonishing 2616 DNA matches, the identification of 840 serial rapists and 229 convictions.
“She is fearless,” says Joyful Heart’s executive director Robyn Mazur. “It comes through in her character and her acting, but it’s 100% who she is and what she does for us at the foundation.”
Mariska’s journey to being a philanthropist started soon after another major milestone – her wedding to fellow actor Peter Hermann.
The couple have had two happy decades together. Recently, they watched as their eldest child, 18-year-old son August, left for university. His adopted siblings, Amaya and Andrew, both 12, are still at home.
Alongside her beloved TV role and her charitable work, building her family has been one of Mariska’s greatest joys.
“Our family is so perfect – or at least perfect for me,” she says. “We’re just this whole happy, joyful, chaotic, crazy unit. I’ve never known anything that was more right.”
Just like her colleagues, Younger star Peter, 57, is in awe of his wife’s ability to turn her star power into real, effective and important change.
“Celebrity and being in the public eye can, of course, be a complicated thing,” Peter says. “But in Mariska’s case, it’s a beautiful way for people to tap into the power of her extraordinary heart.”
Mariska’s run on SVU has made hers the longest-running primetime drama character in TV history and she’s got no plans for retirement any time soon.
“I don’t need to be here,” she admits. “I have a lot of other things going on, but I love this place and I love this job.”
But while everyone else seems to make a big deal out of her iconic alter ego – Taylor Swift even named one of her beloved cats Olivia Benson! – her youngest son doesn’t yet get it.
“He thinks I play a cop on TV, end of story,” Mariska grins. “He asked, ‘Why does everyone say they love you when we’re walking down the street?’”
A lifetime of missing mum
Mariska may have followed in her mum Jayne Mansfield’s famous footsteps, but sadly, she never even got to know her. The actress and Playboy Playmate died in a car crash in 1967 – when Mariska was just three years old.
Opening up about how the loss affected her life, Mariska says, “I grew up in a house of people dealing with the tragedy in their own way. Because there was so much grief, there wasn’t room to prioritise anyone. We didn’t have the tools that we have now to metabolise and understand trauma.”
Over time, Mariska has learned to “lean into” the loss to try to make it through. She says she chooses to look at her “amazing, beautiful” late mother’s life through a rose-coloured lens.
“My mother was just so ahead of her time,” tells Mariska. “She was an inspiration, she had this appetite for life and I think I share that with her. Someone once said about my mother, ‘All you have to do is look in the mirror.’ She’s with me still.”
