http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariska_Hargitay
Mariska Hargitay is the fourth of five children born to Jayne Mansfield, an actress and sex symbol of the 1950s and 1960s. She was born at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California. Her first and middle names are Hungarian and refer to Mary Magdalen (Mariska is a diminutive of Maria and therefore Mary). As a child, she was called Maria. She has a sister, Jayne Marie Mansfield, and three brothers, Miklós and Zoltan Hargitay and Antonio Ottaviano (a.k.a. Tony Cimber, a director whose works include the female wrestling show G.L.O.W.).
Hargitay's mother had divorced Hungarian-born former Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay, in May 1963, but a judge later found their Mexican divorce invalid. They had reconciled a few months before Mariska's birth but soon separated again, and in August 1964, the Mexican divorce was ruled legal. A few weeks later, Mansfield married the director Matt Cimber, who had directed her in a 1964 production of the William Inge play Bus Stop.
On June 29, 1967, her mother Jayne Mansfield was killed in an automobile accident on a stretch of U.S. Highway 90, between New Orleans and Slidell, Louisiana. Jayne's boyfriend Sam Brody and the driver were also killed. Mariska, then three-and-a-half, was left with a zig-zag scar down one side of her head. Mariska's father Mickey Hargitay (Mansfield's ex-husband) and her brothers Miklós and Zoltan were also in the car, but escaped with minor injuries. After the death of their mother, the three siblings were raised by Mickey Hargitay and his third wife, Ellen Siano.