Mariska Hargitay: 5 Facts You Didn't Know About the 'SVU' Star

She may be best known for her role as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, but Mariska Hargitay is so much more than that character. In fact, the 55-year-old beauty is a wife, a mom of three and an extremely impassioned activist!

For the past 21 years, Mariska has learned to perfectly balance her career and family. But even though she makes it look easier than ever, the ER alum told Closer Weekly she is actually still learning to juggle all her responsibilities. “I look at my life now and think, I’m on a TV show, I run a foundation, I run a household, I’m a mom, I’m a wife, I’m a lot of things. I’m learning to be present with where I am,” she explained in June 2018. “The truth is we have to live the journey, right? That’s what I’ve learned.”

Scroll through the gallery below to check out five fun facts you might not know about Mariska!

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My Mother Was More Than a Bombshell

Mariska was in the car when her movie-star mom, Jayne Mansfield, died in a crash at 34 in 1967. But she prefers to remember Jayne the way she lived, not the way she died. “My mother was this amazing, beautiful, glamorous sex symbol,” she told People in March 2018. “But people didn’t know that she played the violin and had a 160 IQ and had five kids and loved dogs.”