Mansfield, who died in 1967 at age 34, was a Hollywood icon who starred in the films ‘Too Hot to Handle’ and ‘Promises! Promises!’

Mariska Hargitay; Jayne Mansfield.Credit : Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty; Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty

Mariska Hargitay’s mother, Jayne Mansfield, may be a Hollywood icon — but her fan base runs a bit older.

While taking part in a Q&A hosted by HamptonsFilm on Thursday, July 17, Mariska, 61, joked about how not everyone knew that Mansfield was her mom when her revealing documentary, My Mom Jayne, premiered earlier this year.

After panel host Molly Jong-Fast noted that “a lot of people had no idea that [Mansfield] was your mom” despite the fact that she’s “really, really famous,” Mariska replied, “Only younger people don’t know. The kids don’t know.”

The discussion followed a special screening of My Mom Jayne at Guild Hall in East Hampton. The documentary, which marked Mariska’s feature film directorial debut, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17 ahead of its debut on HBO and Max on June 27.

In a press release announcing the documentary, 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.”

Mariska Hargitay as a baby with her mother, Jayne Mansfield, in 1964.Archive Photos/Getty

Mansfield — who rose to fame as a Playboy model and an actress, known for such films as Too Hot to Handle and Promises! Promises! — died at age 34 in a car crash in 1967. Mariska, who was 3 at the time, and her two older brothers were in the car and survived the accident.

“I’ve spent my whole life distancing myself from my mother, Jayne Mansfield, the sex symbol,” Mariska says in the film’s trailer. “Her career made me want to do it differently, but I want to understand her now.”

“I don’t have any memories of her,” she adds.

In the documentary, Mariska also revealed a shocking family secret that she kept for 30 years. She explained that her biological father is not Mickey Hargitay, the man who raised her, but rather a former Las Vegas entertainer named Nelson Sardelli.

Mariska Hargitay at the HamptonsFilm Summer Docs series screening of ‘My Mom Jayne’ on July 17, 2025.Sonia Moskowitz/Getty

She told Vanity Fair that she first learned about Sardelli when she was 25 and then went to see him perform in Atlantic City, N.J., when she was 30. While Sardelli had an emotional reaction to their meeting, telling her, “I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment” — Mariska grappled with “knowing I’m living a lie my entire life.”

During her discussion with Jong-Fast on Thursday, Mariska shared that she spent Father’s Day with Sardelli, 90, this year.

“It was so magical,” she recalled. “He apologized and he said, ‘Thank you for forgiving me.’ And I said, ‘Thank you for making the choice that you made.’ “

“So it’s like everyone was right in the end, but I grew up not knowing that,” she added.

The panel discussion was part of HamptonsFilm’s Summer Docs Screening Series. On Aug. 29, Middletown directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss and film subject Jeff Dutemple will join Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) co-chair Alec Baldwin and artistic director David Nugent in conversation.

Richard Gladstein, the new executive director of HamptonsFilms and HIFF, told PEOPLE: “We have a nice platform from which to show our films. And why do films want to come to film festivals? You create buzz and word of mouth about your film. That’s what happens at film festivals. You discover films and filmmakers.”