Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
NEW YORK -- In her trailer, Mariska Hargitay balances a baby on one hip, a holster on the other.
The infant is her then-4-month-old son August, a chubby-cheeked, cashmere-clad, blue-eyed bundle of gurgles and grins. And the firearm case belongs to Detective Olivia Benson, the character Hargitay has played on NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for eight seasons.
"I was so worried about going back to work," says Hargitay, who brings her son and nanny to the set with her every day. "I don't leave home without him! Just like a new American Express card. The blessing is I can be with him all day. ... I can't believe how lucky I am."
Indeed, it has been a big year for Hargitay, 42. In June, she gave birth to her child with her actor husband, Peter Hermann, 39. In August, she won her first Emmy for playing Benson, the lonely child of a rape victim who spends her days and nights investigating sex crimes. And in September, she lost her father, actor and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay. (Her mother was actress Jayne Mansfield.)
She gets teary-eyed when she shows a digital photo on her iBook of a bedridden, hospitalized Mickey cradling baby August. "It's like they got each other," she sighs. "It was so unspoken but so beautiful. Fortunately, I have these great pictures. My two favorite guys together. It's been an amazingly full year. Amazing how life can throw everything at you at once."
There's plenty of drama ahead for SVU's (Tuesdays, 10 p.m. ET/PT) Detective Benson as well. She finds out about family she never knew existed. Hargitay calls it "probably the biggest thing that's ever happened to Olivia."
Unlike her standoffish character, Hargitay is a chatty charmer on the set. She poses for photos with passersby outside a Bronx school, where the show shoots this day, teases the network photographer about a cellphone he fried during a trip abroad and hands a freezing bystander one of her hand-warmers. "Don't you want to date me now?" she yells, running back to rehearse her scene with co-star Chris Meloni.
Winning her Emmy didn't so much revitalize the procedural drama, the highest-rated of the Law & Order franchise and the leader of its time slot, as it did her personally.
"I don't think the show was doing bad before the Emmy," Hargitay jokes. "It makes me only want to be better. Now I'm an Emmy winner. I have to step it up."
She would like to lighten up with a comedy, but "I have no intentions of leaving, even though our contracts are up this year," she says.
After a six-month maternity leave that saw Benson going undercover with the feds, a newly svelte Hargitay is back in fighting shape. She plans to nurse August until he turns 1, eats organic vegetables and poultry and two pieces of dark chocolate every day, and has hired a personal trainer so her "body and spine would be strong" for toting August around in a Baby Bjorn.
Motherhood, Meloni says, "filled out her life and got her in touch with her center. It's been very good to her."
Hargitay scoots into her trailer during breaks to play with August, a kid who smiles at everyone. She shows pictures of co-stars Ice-T and Meloni cradling August.
"He's completely embraced here. People are fighting over who gets to hold him."
You won't catch her on the party circuit. "I just want to spend as much time with him as possible," Hargitay says. "He comes out, and it's like, 'You are my life.' It reinvigorates and re-energizes your marriage. My husband and I are so much more in love than we were before. We can see these new parts of each other as parents."
Her wide-eyed son sits in her lap, grabs her hand and tugs on her index finger. "This kid," she says, gazing at him, "knows he was wanted more than anything in the room. I hit the jackpot."
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
