Who

Actress Mariska Hargitay plays uptight detective Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Backstory

Hargitay comes from a showbiz family: Her mother was B-movie bombshell Jayne Mansfield and her dad was the Hungarian-born former Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay. Mariska was just three when her mother was killed in a car accident in Louisiana; although she was in the car with her mother at time (along with her two brothers), she survived, suffering a scar that now runs across her head. Hargitay started acting and modeling as a teenager (she won the Miss Beverly Hills pageant in 1982) and made her movie debut while a student at UCLA in 1983's Star 80. But for much of the late '80s and early '90s, Hargitay made do with low-profile parts on TV shows like Falcon Crest, Baywatch, and Seinfeld and in movies like Leaving Las Vegas (she played the role of "Hooker in Bar"). Her profile was boosted in 1997 when she earned a recurring part as Cynthia Hooper on ER. Two years later, Dick Wolf cast her in Law & Order: SVU as Detective Olivia Benson and she's now spent nearly a decade discovering dead girls' bodies in dumpsters alongside fellow castmates Chris Meloni, Ice-T and Richard Belzer.

Keeping score

Hargitay and SVU co-star Chris Meloni collect about $330,000 per episode.

Personal

In 2004, Hargitay married actor Peter Hermann, whom she met on the set of SVU. The couple's son, August, was born in June 2006. From 2002 to 2007, Hargitay lived in a Jeffrey Bilhuber-designed penthouse loft in Tribeca. In 2007, she put the 2,500-square-foot space on the market for $6.5 million, later selling it for the reduced price of $5.1 million.