On a June 26 appearance on The View to promote her new HBO documentary My Mom Jayne, Mariska Hargitay revealed that learning that Mickey Hargitay — her mother Jayne Mansfield‘s ex-husband and the man who raised her and her siblings after Mansfield’s tragic 1967 death — was not her biological father was a crushing experience.

“It was brutal,” the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star said. “Like I say in the film, it really collapsed me and shattered me because I identified with my father and having lost my mother so young, I just felt untethered and who did I belong to? I was like … I really had an identity crisis.”