American actress and noted family, one of three kids of actress Jayne Mansfield and her husband Mickey Hargitay, along with two half-siblings. After her mom was killed in a violent auto accident in 1967, she was raised by her dad and a step-mom whom she adored.
Raised partly in Europe where her dad was acting in films, she speaks French, Hungarian, Italian and English. She loves to ski, run and do push-ups to keep in buff shape.
As a young actress in film and TV she was nicknamed “Bubbles” for her enthusiasm and non-stop energy. She prefers the term “resilient.” Her films include “Star 80,” 1983, “The Perfect Weapon,” 1991 and “Leaving Las Vegas,” 1995. In 1997 she played in the pilot for two TV series, “Prince Street,” which was cancelled after two shows and “Cracker,” in which she plays an LAPD cop. She became star of the NBC series, “Law & Order.” A natural brunette, she has made no attempt to follow her mom’s footsteps as a sexpot, but cultivates her acting skills in small dramatic roles, often as a tomboy.
At the turn of the millennium, Hargitay has a history of several long-term relationships but remained unmarried for a long time, saying that she “trusts God’s timing.” At age 40, she tied the knot with actor Peter Hermann. They wed on August 28, 2004 in Santa Barbara, CA. Two years later, at age 42, she gave birth by Caesarean section to their first child, a son named August, born on June 28, 2006 in Los Angeles, CA at 3:20 PM local time according to news reports. In April 2011, she and her husband adopted Amaya Josephine and attended her birth. In October 2011, she and her husband adopted a baby boy, Andrew Nicolas Hargitay Hermann, who had been born in mid-2011.
On September 14, 2006, her famous father died at age 80 in Los Angeles of bone marrow cancer.
She suffered a partially collapsed lung in mid-January 2009 and was hospitalized the first week of March 2009, still sufferng its effects.
Link to Wikipedia biography