Mickey Hargitay was a Hungarian immigrant who rose to fame in the United States as a bodybuilder, but he's perhaps best known for marrying Jayne Mansfield and raising actress Mariska Hargitay.
ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock PhotoMr. Universe Mickey Hargitay, a Hungarian-born actor and bodybuilder.
“Bodybuilding was dominated by American champions; there was no hope for anyone else,” Arnold Schwarzenegger once said. Schwarzenegger, who first rose to fame as a bodybuilder, was from Austria himself, but he may very well not have reached the heights he did in America if it weren’t for the man who paved the way for him: Mickey Hargitay.
When Hargitay won the Mr. Universe competition in 1955, it didn’t just change his life — it changed the entire sport of bodybuilding. Yet, somehow, it was not his most defining moment.
Nowadays, he is best remembered as the husband of Jayne Mansfield, or perhaps as the loving father of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actress Mariska Hargitay, but a shocking new report from May 2025 cast a whole new light on the late Mr. Universe. Mariska Hargitay revealed that Mickey Hargitay was not, in fact, her biological father.
Her actual father was Italian singer Nelson Sardelli — but her insights into the man who raised her, Mickey Hargitay, prove that he was every bit the “inspirational force” others had claimed him to be.
How Mickey Hargitay Went From Soviet Refugee To Mr. Universe
Miklós Károly “Mickey” Hargitay was born in Budapest, Hungary, on Jan. 6. 1926 to Ferenc and Mária Hargitay. Ferenc, an athlete himself, raised his four children as sportsmen as well. The Hargitay sons began performing as an acrobatic act and became quite popular in the country, even appearing at Budapest’s largest opera house.
In his teen years, young Mickey was introduced to speed skating by his brother. He later went on to win the Middle European championship at 500 and 1,500 meters in 1946 — all the while fighting with the resistance during World War II. However, according to The Independent, the Soviet military draft in 1947 forced 21-year-old Hargitay to flee Hungary, setting his sights instead on the United States of America.
He arrived later that year and settled into a relatively mundane life in the Midwest. While working as a carpenter and a plumber, he also performed an adagio acrobatic act at various nightclubs with his first wife, Mary Birge. Then, after seeing a magazine cover featuring the legendary bodybuilder and actor Steve Reeves, Hargitay was inspired to enter bodybuilding competitions.
In the early 1950s, he started making the rounds at various “body beautiful” events and won numerous local contests, including Mr. Indianapolis and Mr. Eastern America. Then, in 1955, he burst onto the national stage after becoming Mr. Universe in the amateur competition — a moment that altered the course of his life and set him on the path to becoming a full-fledged star.
ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock PhotoMickey Hargitay was 29 years old when he won the Mr. Universe competition.
“Walter Winchell once said that what Eisenhower did for golf, Mickey Hargitay did for bodybuilding, because he brought it to the forefront,” bodybuilding historian Gene Mozee told the Los Angeles Times in 2006.
Hargitay wasn’t just popular because he had an excellent physique and large muscles, though. As Mozee explained, “At that time, athletic coaches discouraged lifting weights, thinking you’d become muscle bound. And along came Mickey Hargitay, a great all-around athlete.”
There were plenty who saw Hargitay and felt inspired in some way or another. Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, for instance, said Hargitay’s win — and his European background — “gave hope for someone like myself and others to dream about.”
“When I came to this country in 1968, he was one of the first people I wanted to meet,” Schwarzenegger noted.
Others, however, felt a different kind of inspiration. Notably, one of these people was the actress and aging sex symbol Mae West, who quickly tapped Hargitay to join her troupe of musclemen in the Mae West Show, her nightclub act at the Latin Quarter in New York City. It was during one of these shows that another Hollywood starlet first noticed Hargitay: Jayne Mansfield.
Mickey Hargitay’s Hollywood Career And Marriage To Jayne Mansfield
PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive / Alamy Stock PhotoJayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay on their wedding day in 1958.
A year after he became Mr. Universe, Hargitay and Birge divorced, but he would not remain a bachelor for long.
While performing in New York in 1956, Hargitay caught the eye of Jayne Mansfield, who reportedly told a waiter, when asked what she would like to order that evening, “I’ll have a steak and the man on the left!”
Mansfield was, by then, a fairly established Hollywood actress, known largely for her “rivalry” with Marilyn Monroe and a recent appearance as the centerfold of Playboy. After seeing Hargitay onstage, Mansfield demanded that he be cast in her upcoming movie Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, a satirical take on fan culture, Hollywood, and advertising.
Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock PhotoJayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay on the set of Too Hot to Handle in 1960.
Hargitay and Mansfield married in 1958 and appeared in a total of four films together. For a few years, the two seemed happy. They lived in a mansion in Beverly Hills with a heart-shaped pool and 13 bathrooms. They also had three children together — or so it was long believed — before divorcing in 1964, but then their story took a tragic turn.
The Sudden Death Of Jayne Mansfield
Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe aftermath of the car accident that killed Jayne Mansfield.
On June 29, 1967, Jayne Mansfield was driving from Biloxi, Mississippi, to New Orleans for a television appearance the next day. Beside Mansfield in the front seat were her driver Ronald Harrison, her boyfriend Samuel Brody, and her dog. In the backseat were three of her sleeping children.
Just after 2 a.m., the 1966 Buick Electra they were riding in crashed into the back of a trailer truck, instantly killing all three adults in the front and the dog.
By some miracle, though, the children were alive when first responders arrived on the scene. One of them was three-year-old Mariska Hargitay, who is now famous in her own right.
ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock PhotoMickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield with Jayne’s daughter from a previous relationship, Jayne Marie, and their son Mickey Jr.
Mariska has spoken publicly about her mother’s death numerous times, but in May 2025, she revealed new information about her parents in the documentary My Mom Jane. Most shockingly, she confessed that she had been “living a lie” for 30 years — and that Mickey Hargitay was not her biological father.
Mariska Hargitay Opens Up About Her Parents’ Legacies
UPI / Alamy Stock PhotoMariska and Mickey Hargitay at the celebration of the 100th episode of Law & Order: SVU.
“I don’t remember the accident. I don’t even remember being told that my mother had died,” Mariska Hargitay told Vanity Fair nearly 58 years after the fatal crash. “I look at photos, and I don’t really remember anything until I was five.”
There had surely been a lot for the actress to unpack regarding her mother’s legacy.
Mansfield was a fairly controversial figure despite her personal accomplishments. Her Playboy shoot prompted her first husband, Paul Mansfield, to seek full custody of their child, claiming that she was unfit to be a mother due to the provocative photos. Marilyn Monroe described Mansfield’s parodies, in which she imitated Monroe, as “an insult to her as well as to myself,” calling them “gross” and “vulgar.”
But Mansfield off-screen was a very different person. She was an accomplished violinist and pianist who spoke several languages. She was a blonde bombshell because it was what Hollywood demanded of her.
“My dad would always say, ‘She wasn’t like that at all,'” Mariska Hargitay recalled. “She was like you. She was funny and irreverent and fearless and real.”
Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock PhotoJayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay in 1960.
After Mansfield’s death, Mickey Hargitay took on the role of raising their children. But according to Mariska, something about her always seemed different, and she didn’t learn why until she was in her 20s.
While Mansfield and Hargitay officially divorced in 1964, they had separated for a brief time in 1963. During that period, she had a rather public romance with the Italian singer Nelson Sardelli. Then, Mansfield and Hargitay reconciled, and a few months later, Mariska was born. When she saw a picture of Sardelli in her 20s, she immediately recognized the man as her biological father.
Still, Mickey Hargitay denied it when she asked him, and the two never spoke about it again. After he died on Sept. 14, 2006, it seemed like the truth might die with him. Mariska Hargitay met her biological father when she was 30 and built a relationship with him and his other daughters, but she realized something else too: Mickey Hargitay was the best father she could have had.
“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. This documentary is kind of a love letter to him, because there’s no one that I was closer to on this planet.”
After reading about the life and legacy of Mickey Hargitay, learn about “Sardinian Strongman” Franco Columbu. Then, go inside the life of Becky Brosmer, the pin-up model with an “impossible waist.”
