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Truth behind Hollywood's most tragic stars
Marilyn Monroe. Jayne Mansfield. Anna Nicole Smith. Hollywood has a long and sad history of churning out blonde bombshells who live fast and die young.
Until recently, Mariska Hargitay had spent her whole life trying to distance herself from one of those famous sex symbols: her mother, Jayne Mansfield.
Playing detective Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for more than 26 years, Hargitay has forged a career breaking down stereotypes about sex and sexuality on screen, not playing up to them.
'I just wanted my mum to be like the other mums!' Hargitay told Vanity Fair ahead of the release of her new documentary My Mum Jayne.
'Like, 'Why are you always in a bathing suit? Why so much breast?' I just wanted a maternal mother image. I was embarrassed by the choices that she made.'
One of the most famous images of Mansfield was taken at a 1957 dinner while seated next to Sophia Loren. As the blonde starlet's cleavage threatened to escape from her dress, Loren was snapped giving Mansfield some serious side-eye. Hargitay hated the iconic shot, explaining in her doco: 'To see another woman look at your mum like that was excruciating for me as a little girl.'
In My Mum Jayne, the actor shares rare archival footage and interviews her older siblings to get better insight into the woman behind the myth, painting a picture of a talented musician who could speak multiple languages. 'Her career made me want to do it differently, but I want to understand her now,' Hargitay explains in her documentary, as she faces the truth about her own paternity and her mother's death in 1967.
Like Monroe before her, Mansfield was eager to be taken seriously as an actor and grew frustrated by the voluptuous, sexed-up image that had made her a household name. And like Monroe, Mansfield died young and in terribly tragic circumstances. Five years after Monroe's overdose, Mansfield, 34, was killed instantly when the car she was travelling in slammed into the trailer of a truck. Hargitay, who was in the backseat with her two brothers, survived the accident.
Before her death, Mansfield admitted that Monroe had been an inspiration to herself and other aspiring actors such as Mamie Van Doren. 'I've always thought, since I was a little girl, that she was the most beautiful woman in the world,' Mansfield said.
'You know, I really don't look like her at all. You can take practically any fairly shaped girl, bleach her hair, wet her lips, put her into a tight dress and have her walk a little wiggly and – well, we all look a little alike.'
The archetype blonde bombshell, Monroe inspired Elton John's song 'Candle In The Wind' and an Andy Warhol pop art series, as well as movies and TV shows.
For Michelle Williams (who was Oscar-nominated for playing Monroe in the 2011 film My Week With Marilyn), the iconic star had a childlike vulnerability that made you want to take care of her. And to prepare for playing the much-copied Monroe, Williams devoured countless biographies.
As soon as you're done with one book, you can pick up another, she told Vogue. Everything I could get my hands on. Footage, clips. I mean honestly, I did feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to the memory of somebody and the way that the person lives on in the world and in the people that admire them.
Ana de Armas also earned an Oscar nod for her confronting portrayal of the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes star in the 2022 Netflix film Blonde. She was living in a nightmare, de Armas said of Monroe's sexy image, during an interview at the Venice Film Festival. This character was like a prison for her, de Armas said in a later interview. She was the most famous and desired woman in the world.
At the same time, she was completely unseen for who she was. She felt like she couldn't show herself to people because that's not what they wanted from her. And she learned that very quickly. I could not imagine something worse to happen to someone, not to be able to be yourself. Art sadly imitated life for one of Monroe's most famous imitators, Nicole Smith. The Texan Playboy playmate made no secret of her Monroe obsession, telling Extra: The way she talked, so poised, so beautiful, so sad. She was all around me.
Smith even lived in Monroe's house for a time and said she'd seen her ghost wandering the halls. According to Smith's limo driver Todd Bernstein, Smith told him she would have liked to die like Marilyn, young and beautiful. And in a sad twist of fate, she did, dying in 2007 from an accidental overdose. She was 39.
Anna Nicole Smith: Singer turned actor and reality star Willa Ford plays the tabloid darling in this 2007 biopic tracing Smith's journey from waitress to Guess model.
T he W ild, Wild World Of Jayne Mansfield: This 1968 posthumous quasi-documentary mashes together real footage of Mansfield travelling through Europe and the US, overlaid with narration by a Mansfield sound-alike.
Blonde: This 2001 miniseries is a fictional account of Monroe's life, featuring Australian-born actor Poppy Montgomery as Monroe, alongside Kirstie Alley, Patrick Dempsey and fellow Aussie Richard Roxburgh.
