My Mom Jayne

The 2025 documentary My Mom Jayne is a moving film about finding one’s roots. The directorial debut of actress Mariska Hargitay (star of the long-running crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), My Mom Jayne is about Hargitay’s attempt to posthumously get to know her very famous mother, Jayne Mansfield.

The fact that Hargitay has no memories of her mother stems from the fact that Mansfield died in a car crash when Hargitay was three—Hargitay and two of her siblings were surviving passengers. In a curious family echo, Mansfield’s own father also died behind the wheel of a car in which Jayne was a three-year-old passenger.

Born Vera Jayne Palmer, Mansfield reportedly aspired from a young age to become a Hollywood star. It did not take long after her move to Los Angeles with her first husband in 1954 for her to get signed to a contract with Twentieth Century Fox, initially competing with Marilyn Monroe for “blonde bombshell” status (though she was a natural brunette). Despite her carefully curated celebrity image, My Mom Jayne reveals that Mansfield was anything but a “dumb blonde,” speaking five languages and classically trained in piano and violin.

Although My Mom Jayne provides some disturbing glimpses into how damaging America can be to families, ultimately its message is an uplifting one about the power and importance of family and the transformative power of love and forgiveness.

My Mom Jayne premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the L’Œil d’or, and won the Critics’ Choice award for “Best First Documentary Feature.”