My Mom Jayne

Mariska Hargitay was three when her mother died in a car crash. She was in the car. Jayne Mansfield was a well known actress at the time; what the public saw was an image, and her daughter never knew her mother outside it. The documentary tries to change that. Hargitay talks with her siblings, opens the family archive, goes through letters and photographs. She learns that her mother played the piano, studied the violin and was a reader. In the same process she discloses something about her own life. Mariska Hargitay directs. Her siblings Jayne Marie Mansfield, Mickey Hargitay Jr., Zoltan Hargitay and Tony Cimber speak; her stepmother and Mansfield's former press secretary also appear. It was released on 27 June 2025. It premiered at the Tribeca Festival. Previously unpublished home movies and photographs are used. In the film Hargitay discloses that Mickey Hargitay was not her biological father and speaks with the man who was; that has been the most discussed part of the documentary. The matter it treats is a woman imprisoned in her own image; Mansfield's publicity methods and the manner of the press are shown directly. The documentary also describes the night of the crash and uses news footage of the period. Its limit is distance; the narrative comes entirely from inside the family and there is no critical view. Who it is for: viewers who like film history and personal documentary. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the viewpoint partisan, and the narrative emotional.