Now she knows what’s special
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.
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 the 42-year-old Hargitay.
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 Benson as well on “SVU” (Tuesdays, 10 p.m.) She finds out about family she never knew existed, which Hargitay calls “probably the biggest thing that’s ever happened to Olivia.”
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.
“It makes me only want to be better,” Hargitay says. “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 (which saw Benson going undercover with the feds), a newly svelte Hargitay is back in fighting shape.
She 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.
“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.”
The birthday bunch
Game-show host Wink Martindale is 72. Actor-producer-director Max Baer Jr. (“The Beverly Hillbillies”) is 69. Actor Jeff Bridges is 57. Actress Marisa Tomei is 42. Rapper Jay-Z is 37. Model Tyra Banks is 33. Country singer Lila McCann is 25.