Mariska Hargitay, the Emmy host who found fame, fortune and a social mission with a single role
She is television’s highest-paid actress thanks to ‘Law & Order: SVU,’ where she has spent 27 seasons playing a detective who has inspired generations of women, including her friend Taylor Swift
Mariska Hargitay, dressed in red and laughing heartily while holding an Emmy in each of her muscular arms, is the very picture of happiness, success and strength.
It is the image the 62-year-old U.S. actress, producer and director shared with her 3.8 million Instagram followers to celebrate her double win at the Creative Arts Emmys, the ceremony that precedes the main Emmy Awards and honors technical and artistic achievements in television. “This happened...,” she posted on Instagram.
The awards, held on September 5, recognized her documentary My Mom Jayne, which chronicles her search to understand and come to terms with her mother, actress Jayne Mansfield, who died at 34 in a car accident that Hargitay survived at the age of three.
But Hargitay’s biggest night comes this Monday, when she takes the stage at Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater as host of the 78th Emmy Awards.
“I think one of the most important things is that I, to quote Frank Sinatra, I gotta do it my way,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter on September 10, as she rolled out the blue carpet that guests will walk before the ceremony. “I’m a very different, sort of unconventional host and I love that because I’m not a comedian, so that’s not necessarily what we’re doing. But you’ve gotta be me, right, you’ve gotta show up as your best self, so that’s what I’m doing.”
The actress revealed that she worked on her script with the team behind The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which was canceled last May after a 33-year run.
Hargitay will become the first woman to host the ceremony in 15 years. In nearly eight decades of television’s biggest awards, only three other women have had that honor: 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 performers have left the kind of mark on television that Mariska has,” said Jen Neal, NBC’s executive vice president of live events, explaining the choice. “For 27 seasons, she has brought strength, compassion and humanity to one of the most beloved characters on TV. As NBC celebrates 100 years of unforgettable storytelling, we can’t think of anyone more fitting to help celebrate the incredible legacy of television.”
Neal did not even mention the character’s name. In the United States, there is little need to explain that she was referring to Olivia Benson, the tough, empathetic and incorruptible detective from Law & Order: SVU, whom Hargitay has portrayed since 1999 in more than 600 episodes.
The role earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in 2005 and her first Emmy Award in 2006. She won another Emmy in 2017 for the documentary I Am Evidence, which exposed the staggering number of untested rape kits across the United States.
“[Playing Olivia Benson has] changed me in so many ways,” Hargitay said in October 2025 during the Shine Away festival organized by Reese Witherspoon. “I look at it sort of as the perfect feminist story, in a way, of how I started here and actually sort of grew into this character and into this person right onscreen and off. At the beginning, [I was] starting and wanting something but not owning or understanding my own power or what I was capable of doing.”
The line separating the actress from her character has grown thinner with each new season. In the series, Benson leads Manhattan’s Special Victims Unit, which investigates sex crimes. Long before the #MeToo movement erupted, her character had already established the principle of always believing victims and, episode after episode, conveyed the message that responsibility for an assault lies solely with the perpetrator.
The Olivia Benson effect was so powerful that it not only inspired women to break their silence and seek help, but many sought that help from Hargitay herself, who received thousands of letters from survivors of rape and abuse. “That these individuals would reveal something so intensely personal — often for the very first time — to someone they knew only as a character on television demonstrated to me how desperate they were to be heard, believed, supported and healed,” she said in 2017.
This led Hargitay to found the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004, an organization dedicated to “transforming society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse,” according to its website. One of the foundation’s most significant achievements came in May, when the United States passed landmark legislation aimed at eliminating the backlog of untested rape kits, the forensic evidence collection kits used to gather physical and biological evidence from a person’s body after a sexual assault.
“Today marks a watershed moment not only for the State of Maine, but for every survivor who has asked if their rape kit was forgotten, if their truth was abandoned on a shelf, if they have hope of finding justice,” the actress said in a statement celebrating the measure.
In January 2024, Hargitay published a long personal essay in People magazine in which she revealed that she had been raped. “A man raped me in my thirties,” she wrote. “He was a friend. Then he wasn’t. I tried all the ways I knew to get out of it. I tried to make jokes, to be charming, to set a boundary, to reason, to say no. He grabbed me by the arms and held me down. I was terrified. I didn’t want it to escalate to violence. I now know it was already sexual violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent. I went into freeze mode, a common trauma response when there is no option to escape. I checked out of my body.”
She made the disclosure just days before her 60th birthday. “I’m renewed and I’m flooded with compassion for all of us who have suffered. And I’m still proudly in process,” she concluded.
Mariska Hargitay/Olivia Benson have inspired several generations of women, many of whom have looked to the character’s leadership as a model. Taylor Swift is a notable example. The singer went from being a devoted fan of the Law & Order: SVU character, naming one of her cats Olivia Benson in 2014, to becoming a close friend of the actress herself.
In 2023, Hargitay returned the tribute by naming her new cat Karma, after Swift’s song. The two have maintained a high-profile friendship marked by a number of viral public appearances, including on June 10, when they attended an NBA Finals game between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs wearing matching outfits.
In 2015, the actress joined the star-studded cast of Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood music video, which also featured Selena Gomez, Lena Dunham, Gigi Hadid and Zendaya. “That was the most fun, being in the squad with all the cool girls and supermodels. It was the most fun ever,” said Hargitay.
Two years later, after Swift won her sexual assault lawsuit against former radio host David Mueller, the singer made a generous donation, the amount of which was never disclosed, to her friend’s foundation. “I hope that Taylor’s very public experience ― and her decision to speak out ― not only helps empower other victims to speak up and take action, but offers them solidarity,” Hargitay said in a statement.
A childhood marked by loss
Law & Order fans are well acquainted with Olivia Benson’s traumatic childhood, but the actress who plays her has a similarly painful history. Hargitay is the daughter of bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay and actress Jayne Mansfield, one of the defining sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s — perhaps best known for the iconic photograph in which Sophia Loren is seen glancing at her cleavage.
The future Emmy host and two of her brothers were riding in the back seat of the car that crashed into a truck in the accident that killed Mansfield and two other adults: Mansfield’s boyfriend, Sam Brody, 40, and the driver, Ronnie Harrison, 20.
“In my life, certainly I’ve tried to avoid pain, loss, feeling things,” Hargitay told People in 2018. “But I’ve learned instead to really lean into it, because sooner or later you have to pay the piper. ’m not saying it’s easy, and it certainly hasn’t been for me. There’s been a lot of darkness. But on the other side things can be so bright."
On the brighter side of life is her family. The actress married her Law & Order co-star Peter Hermann in 2004, and two years later they welcomed their first child, August. In 2011, the couple adopted two more children, Amaya and Andrew.
“Our family is so perfect, or at least perfect for me,” the actress told People. “The beauty is that families are made in so many different ways, and that was my reality as a child.”
“I’m so grateful that I’m an older mom. Grateful that I became successful older. I don’t know if I could have handled it when I was younger,” she also told the magazine in 2024, reflecting on becoming a first-time mother at the age of 42.
Mariska Hargitay never needed to become a traditional Hollywood superstar to succeed. In 2025, Forbes reported that she was the second highest-paid actress of the previous year, behind Nicole Kidman and ahead of Scarlett Johansson. “She earns an estimated $750,000 per episode between acting and producing fees, as well as a slice of the show’s considerable syndication profits,” the business magazine wrote, referring to Law & Order: SVU, the longest-running primetime live-action series in U.S. television history.
Playing Olivia Benson has brought Hargitay fame, a vast fortune estimated at $100 million, her family, and a social cause to champion. This Monday, she will be surrounded by colleagues hoping to take home an award, but she stands as proof that a single role, carried with conviction over decades, can change a life far more profoundly than winning an Emmy.
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