Mariska Hargitay dressed in red and laughing heartily while holding an Emmy in each of her muscular arms is the living image of happiness, success, and power. It is the image that the 62-year-old American actress, producer, and director shared with her 3.8 million Instagram followers to celebrate that on September 5 she was awarded twice at the Creative Arts Emmys — the ceremony prior to the main gala that recognizes technical and artistic achievements in television — for her documentary My Mom Jayne. The film narrates her quest to understand and accept her mother, actress Jayne Mansfield, who died at 34 in a car accident that Hargitay, then three years old, survived. “This has happened…,” she wrote alongside the triumphant portrait. But her big night is this Monday, when she will take the stage at the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles as the new host of the 78th Emmy Awards.
“I think one of the most important things is that, paraphrasing Frank Sinatra, I have to do it my way,” the actress told The Hollywood Reporter on September 10, when she rolled out the blue carpet for the guests attending the gala. “I am a very different, unconventional host, and I love that because I’m not a comedian, so we’re not trying to do that. You have to show yourself as you are, at your best, and that’s what I’m doing,” the actress, who has worked on her script with the team from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — canceled last May after 33 years on air — revealed.
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Hargitay will be the first woman to host the gala in 15 years. Over the nearly eight decades of television awards, only three others have had this privilege: Ellen DeGeneres in 2001 and 2005; Heidi Klum — alongside Tom Bergeron, Howie Mandel, Jeff Probst, and Ryan Seacrest — in 2008; and Jane Lynch in 2011. “Few actresses have left as deep a mark on television as Mariska,” justified the decision Jen Neal, NBC’s executive vice president of events. “For 27 seasons, she has brought strength, compassion, and humanity to one of television’s most beloved characters. We can’t think of anyone more appropriate to celebrate television’s incredible legacy,” she assured. Neal didn’t even mention the character’s name because in the United States it’s understood to be Olivia Benson, the strong, empathetic, and incorruptible detective from Law & Order whom Hargitay has portrayed since 1999 in over 600 episodes.
This role earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in 2005 and her first Emmy in 2006 — she won another for Best Documentary in 2017 for I Am Evidence, in which she revealed the staggering number of unprocessed rape cases in the US. “Playing Olivia Benson has changed me in many ways. I see it as the perfect feminist story: I started here and matured into this character and this person, both on and off camera. When I was starting out, I wanted something, but I wasn’t aware of my own power or what I was capable of,” Hargitay said in October 2025 during the Shine Away festival, organized by Reese Witherspoon.
The line separating the actress from her character grows thinner with each new season. In the fiction, Benson leads the Manhattan Special Victims Unit, where they investigate sexual crimes. Before the #MeToo movement erupted, her character already established the premise of always believing victims and conveyed episode after episode that the blame for an assault lies solely with the aggressor. The Olivia Benson effect was so powerful that it not only inspired women to break the silence and seek help, but many sought that help from Hargitay herself, who received thousands of letters from victims of rape and abuse. “The fact that these people revealed something so deeply personal, often for the first time, to someone they only knew as a TV character, showed me how desperate they were to be heard, believed, supported, and healed,” she said in 2017.
This motivated Hargitay to found Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004, an organization to “transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse,” according to its website. One of the foundation’s main achievements was securing the approval in May of a legislative reform in the US to eradicate the backlog of untested rape kits — the materials used to collect physical and biological evidence from a person after a sexual assault. “Today is a decisive day for all survivors who have wondered if their rape kit had been forgotten, if their truth had been left on a shelf, or if they had any hope of obtaining justice,” the actress celebrated in a statement.
In January 2024, she herself shared a long essay with People magazine in which she revealed a rape case she experienced firsthand. “A man raped me when I was in my thirties,” she began. “He was my friend. Then he wasn’t. I tried everything to escape. I tried joking, being charming, setting boundaries, reasoning, saying no. He grabbed my arms and immobilized me. I was terrified. I didn’t want the situation to escalate to violence. Now I know it was already sexual violence, but I feared he would become physically violent. I froze, a common trauma response when there is no escape. I disconnected from my body,” she confessed days before turning 60. “I feel renewed and full of compassion for all of us who have suffered. And I continue to evolve, proudly,” she concluded her story.
Mariska Hargitay/Olivia Benson has inspired several generations of women who have taken her leadership as an example. For instance, Taylor Swift, who went from being a superfan of the Law & Order character — in 2014 she named one of her cats after her — to becoming a great friend of the actress — who in 2023 returned the gesture by naming her new cat Karma, the title of a Swift song. They maintain a close friendship that includes several viral appearances, such as the one on June 10, when they attended together an NBA Finals game between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs.
In 2015, the actress was part of the famous cast of the singer’s Bad Blood music video, which also featured Selena Gomez, Lena Dunham, Gigi Hadid, and Zendaya. “It was so much fun to form a group with all those cool girls and supermodels. It was the most fun I’ve ever had,” Hargitay admitted. Two years later, after winning a sexual assault lawsuit against former radio host David Mueller, Swift made a generous donation — never specified — to her friend’s foundation. “I hope Swift’s donation and commitment not only help empower other victims to raise their voices and take action but also offer them solidarity,” Hargitay expressed.
A childhood marked by loss
Law & Order fans will be well aware of Benson’s traumatic childhood, but the actress’s own is no less so. Hargitay is the daughter of bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay and actress Jayne Mansfield, a sex symbol in the fifties and sixties — star of the iconic photo where Sophia Loren glances sideways at her cleavage. The Emmy host and two of her siblings were in the back seat of the car that crashed into a truck in the tragic accident that ended Mansfield’s life and two other adults — her boyfriend, Sam Brody, 40; and the driver, Ronnie Harrison, 20. “In my life, I have tried to avoid pain, loss, and feelings. But I have learned to face them head-on because sooner or later you have to pay the consequences. I’m not saying it’s easy, and it certainly hasn’t been for me. There has been a lot of darkness. But on the other side, things can be very bright,” Hargitay confessed to People in 2018.
On the bright side is her family. The actress married her Law & Order co-star Peter Hermann (New York, 59 years old) in 2004, with whom she welcomed their first son, August, two years later. In 2011, the couple adopted two more children, Amaya and Andrew. “Our family is perfect, or at least it’s perfect for me. Together we are a complete, happy, joyful, chaotic, and a little crazy unit. I’ve never known anything better,” she said in her interview with People. “I’m very grateful to be an older mother. I don’t know if I could have handled it when I was younger,” she admitted to the same outlet in 2024, after becoming a first-time mother at 42.
Mariska Hargitay has not needed to transform into a big Hollywood star to succeed. In 2025, Forbes published that she was the second highest-paid actress of the previous year, only behind Nicole Kidman and ahead of Scarlett Johansson. “She is the highest-paid television actress by a wide margin. It is estimated that she earns about $750,000 per episode between acting and producing, as well as a share of the considerable syndication profits of the series [the longest-running US prime-time television show],” argued the business magazine.
Playing Olivia Benson has given Hargitay her fame, her immense fortune — estimated at $100 million —, her family, and a social cause to defend. This Monday she will be surrounded by colleagues eager to take home an award, but she is the example that a single well-played role can change your life much more than winning an Emmy.
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