Many legends have graced the Actors on Actors set, but few Hollywood dynasties have collided like Mariska Hargitay’s and Jamie Lee Curtis’. The former is the daughter of Jayne Mansfield, the ’50s bombshell who died in an auto accident. Her rich and complicated legacy is the subject of Hargitay’s acclaimed documentary, “My Mom Jayne,” from HBO, which is in Emmy contention this year. More impressive is that Hargitay pulled the film together while playing the hard-driving detective Olivia Benson on NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” a character who has only become more iconic over the show’s 27 years. The latter is the Oscar-winning daughter of screen legends Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Curtis has transformed over and over, from scream queen (“Halloween”) to ’80s comedy icon (“Trading Places”) to meme-worthy mom (“Freaky Friday” and FX’s “The Bear” ).
It’s easy to imagine the pair as old friends, catching each other on the coasts and dishing over the decades about co-stars, executives and their craft. But the famous offspring only recently became “sisters,” as they describe it. Variety was lucky to capture how and when they sparked, and what unfolds when memory lane looks a lot like the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
