The Law & Order: SVU star has become one of the highest paid actresses in the business and a tireless activist for victims of sexual violence

Mariska Hargitay, Birthday FeatureGetty Images; NBC; Melissa Herwitt/E! Illustration

It’s hard to remember a time when Mariska Hargitay wasn’t synonymous with Olivia Benson. Heck, it’s getting increasingly hard to remember a time when Taylor Swift wasn’t synonymous with Olivia Benson.

After all, Hargitay has played the cop and feline namesake for 20 years now on Law & Order: SVU, starting as a detective and rising through the ranks to become a seasoned sergeant and, now, a regularly aggrieved lieutenant and single mom on the ever-intense NBC drama.

The iconic role wasn’t the actress’ first—she had been acting for 15 years before scoring the plum part—but she has been perfectly fine with it being her primary acting focus while she raises her own family with her husband, Peter Hermann, whom she met on the show, and tirelessly works to help victims of sexual violence in real life.

Basically, SVU was the gift that has never stopped giving—be it love, a comfortable life or a platform—but Hargitay’s journey to finding happiness couldn’t have started out more tragically.

“Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul,” she told Redbook in 2009. “But I feel like it ultimately made me into the person I am today. I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here.”

The celebrity world is full of actors and artists whose parents were also actors and artists, some doomed to forever be overshadowed by famous family members, while others become major players in their own right.

Hargitay has become entirely her own star, but that doesn’t make her any less a part of one of Hollywood’s most incredible stories.

Hungarian-born bodybuilder turned actor Mickey Hargitay, named Mr. Universe in 1955, married actress Jayne Mansfield, a star who embodied the description “blonde bombshell” and ran with it, in 1958. It was the second marriage for both, each had one child already, and the bride had only been divorced for about a week from Paul Mansfield when they said their I-dos. (Five-time Mr. Universe Arnold Schwarzenegger and Loni Anderson played the couple in the 1980 TV movie The Jayne Mansfield Story.)