The actress suspected such for a while before meeting him. She said that when she was in her 20s, she made the realization after someone showed her a photo of the longtime Vegas performer.
“It was like the floor fell out from underneath me,” she says in the upcoming documentary My Mom Jayne. “Like my infrastructure dissolved.”
But according to Vanity Fair, when she confronted Mickey about it, he denied it, and she never mentioned Nelson again to her dad. The actor—who also shared with Jayne kids Mickey “Miklos” Jr., now 66, and Zoltan, 64, and helped raise her daughter Jayne Marie, 74, from a previous relationship—died at age 80 in 2006.
Mariska said that after the encounter with Nelson in Atlantic City, she did end up bonding with him and the daughters he raised. And while she struggled for a while “knowing I’m living a lie my entire life,” she ultimately realized something important about her upbringing.
“I grew up where I was supposed to, and I do know that everyone made the best choice for me,” she said. “I’m Mickey Hargitay’s daughter—that is not a lie.”
Look back at Mariska’s family photo album.
