150 Word Review: 'My Mom Jayne' (2025)
Blonde ambition
The award–winning actor Mariska Hargitay's new documentary My Mom Jayne is a deeply personal examination of her mother, “blonde bombshell” Jayne Mansfield, who died tragically at 34 in 1967 when Hargitay was three years old.
The documentary is a snapshot of grimy Golden Age Hollywood and the ambitions of a talented, complex, young woman who became trapped inside her famous persona. But it also explores family secrets and childhood trauma.
Hargitay, the star of the long-running procedural Law & Order: SVU, is an experienced documentarian who allows herself to become part of the story. She interviews her older siblings, stepmother, and Mansfield's nearly 100-year-old former press secretary about the mother she never knew. Their memories, and archival footage, resurrect the actress.
Hargitay learns genuinely shocking truths, but she’s never sentimental. She is a disciplined filmmaker first, a compassionate daughter and sibling second. This is an affecting ghost story about forgiveness.