Truth behind Hollywood's most tragic stars
Until recently, Mariska Hargitay had spent her whole life trying to distance herself from one of those famous sex symbols: her mother, Jayne Mansfield.
Playing detective Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for more than 26 years, Hargitay has forged a career breaking down stereotypes about sex and sexuality on screen, not playing up to them.
'I just wanted my mum to be like the other mums!' Hargitay told Vanity Fair ahead of the release of her new documentary My Mum Jayne.
'Like, 'Why are you always in a bathing suit? Why so much breast?' I just wanted a maternal mother image. I was embarrassed by the choices that she made.'
One of the most famous images of Mansfield was taken at a 1957 dinner while seated next to Sophia Loren. As the blonde starlet's cleavage threatened to escape from her dress, Loren was snapped giving Mansfield some serious side-eye. Hargitay hated the iconic shot, explaining in her doco: 'To see another woman look at your mum like that was excruciating for me as a little girl.'
In My Mum Jayne, the actor shares rare archival footage and interviews her older siblings to get better insight into the woman behind the myth, painting a picture of a talented musician who could speak multiple languages. 'Her career made me want to do it differently, but I want to understand her now,' Hargitay explains in her documentary, as she faces the truth about her own paternity and her mother's death in 1967.
Like Monroe before her, Mansfield was eager to be taken seriously as an actor and grew frustrated by the voluptuous, sexed-up image that had made her a household name. And like Monroe, Mansfield died young and in terribly tragic circumstances. Five years after Monroe's overdose, Mansfield, 34, was killed instantly when the car she was travelling in slammed into the trailer of a truck. Hargitay, who was in the backseat with her two brothers, survived the accident.
Before her death, Mansfield admitted that Monroe had been an inspiration to herself and other aspiring actors such as Mamie Van Doren. 'I've always thought, since I was a little girl, that she was the most beautiful woman in the world,' Mansfield said.
'You know, I really don't look like her at all. You can take practically any fairly shaped girl, bleach her hair, wet her lips, put her into a tight dress and have her walk a little wiggly and – well, we all look a little alike.'
The archetype blonde bombshell, Monroe inspired Elton John's song 'Candle In The Wind' and an Andy Warhol pop art series, as well as movies and TV shows.
For Michelle Williams (who was Oscar-nominated for playing Monroe in the 2011 film My Week With Marilyn), the iconic star had a childlike vulnerability that made you want to take care of her. And to prepare for playing the much-copied Monroe, Williams devoured countless biographies.
As soon as you're done with one book, you can pick up another, she told Vogue. Everything I could get my hands on. Footage, clips. I mean honestly, I did feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to the memory of somebody and the way that the person lives on in the world and in the people that admire them.
Ana de Armas also earned an Oscar nod for her confronting portrayal of the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes star in the 2022 Netflix film Blonde. She was living in a nightmare, de Armas said of Monroe's sexy image, during an interview at the Venice Film Festival. This character was like a prison for her, de Armas said in a later interview. She was the most famous and desired woman in the world.
At the same time, she was completely unseen for who she was. She felt like she couldn't show herself to people because that's not what they wanted from her. And she learned that very quickly. I could not imagine something worse to happen to someone, not to be able to be yourself. Art sadly imitated life for one of Monroe's most famous imitators, Nicole Smith. The Texan Playboy playmate made no secret of her Monroe obsession, telling Extra: The way she talked, so poised, so beautiful, so sad. She was all around me.
Smith even lived in Monroe's house for a time and said she'd seen her ghost wandering the halls. According to Smith's limo driver Todd Bernstein, Smith told him she would have liked to die like Marilyn, young and beautiful. And in a sad twist of fate, she did, dying in 2007 from an accidental overdose. She was 39.
Anna Nicole Smith: Singer turned actor and reality star Willa Ford plays the tabloid darling in this 2007 biopic tracing Smith's journey from waitress to Guess model.
T he W ild, Wild World Of Jayne Mansfield: This 1968 posthumous quasi-documentary mashes together real footage of Mansfield travelling through Europe and the US, overlaid with narration by a Mansfield sound-alike.
Blonde: This 2001 miniseries is a fictional account of Monroe's life, featuring Australian-born actor Poppy Montgomery as Monroe, alongside Kirstie Alley, Patrick Dempsey and fellow Aussie Richard Roxburgh.
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ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
The teen 'Luddites' rethinking how they use tech ahead of Australia's under-16s social media ban
Like many young New Yorkers, Jameson Butler was 10 years old when she received her first mobile in 2017. It was a smartphone with access to a plethora of distracting social media apps. By 12, she was so "engrossed" in her small screen that it began to trouble her parents and, though she didn't admit it at the time, herself. "My screen time [then] was around five to six hours, which is a pretty decent chunk of my day, especially considering the fact that I was in school for eight hours," she tells ABC Radio National's Science Friction. So at 14, Ms Butler did something few others her age would even contemplate; she stopped scrolling, deleted her social media accounts, and gave up her smartphone. What she discovered was that life had much more to offer her outside of a hand-held device; Ms Butler could finally pay attention to the world instead of living life vicariously through strangers on the internet. To make sure she was still contactable in emergencies, Ms Butler bought a "dumbphone" without any apps. "The flip phone just made so much sense," she adds. She thought she was the only one who felt this way until she met Logan Lane, a high school student two years her senior with similar beliefs. Together they formed the Luddite Club, a group that promotes the "conscious consumption of technology" among teens and young adults. The name is inspired by the original Luddites, textile workers in England who formed a rebellion during the Industrial Revolution, raiding factories at night to destroy the machines threatening their livelihoods. But Ms Butler and her fellow Luddite Club members don't think of themselves as revolutionaries; their goal is simply to "empower young people and give them the tools they need to help themselves". The idea of building safe offline spaces, especially for children, is catching on in other parts of the world. A town in France introduced a ban on the public use of phones last year, and parents are forming community groups to prevent their children from accessing phones until they are older. Here in Australia, a ban on under-16s accessing some social media platforms will become law in December 2025. But who is best placed to impose these restrictions? Should it be up to governments, organisations or individuals? Ms Butler is now 18 and isn't planning to get a smartphone for as long as possible, even if "having a flip phone in 2025 definitely make[s] … life harder in some aspects". "Especially as we now see QR codes, links to websites everywhere. A lot of my schoolwork is online," she acknowledges. Her dedication has surprised her parents, who didn't think her smartphone-free status was going to last. "I definitely spend more quality time with my family. I'm more present at family dinners, I do my schoolwork faster, I have better grades, I'm more organised, I'm more on top of everything, I've become a lot less scatterbrained," she says. The idea to unite like-minded New Yorkers in forming the Luddite Club was fuelled, in part, by Ms Butler's and Ms Lane's own experiences navigating a less tech-dependent lifestyle. "We realised the hardest part about making that transition [is] the feelings of isolation that come with it and a lack of community," she says. However, finding teens and young adults who share their views is difficult, with many not convinced that giving up their phones is the ticket to a better life. Critics argue the Luddite Club is classist and that living without a phone is a privilege, given many people use it to be included in society. "[The perception is that] … we have all these rules for Luddite Club and requirements to join, when in reality, that's not true," Ms Butler explains. Those who do take part are only required to follow one rule at their regular Luddite Club meetings: put any devices away for the duration of the gathering. "Other than that, the Luddite Club is very free-range and spontaneous," Ms Butler says. "We like to keep the Luddite Club very loosely structured because we've noticed that when you take these devices and these distractions away from people, they don't need prompting, immediately meaningful conversations [are spawned]." The Luddite Club has now expanded beyond New York to states like Florida and Philadelphia. But the bigger issue may be spreading their message to adults. "Now I'm the one at family dinner like, 'Mum, get off of Facebook'," the teenager says. More than half of Australian children aged 10 to 13 own a mobile phone. And much of the debate about social media and devices recently has focused on those aged 16 and under. High school teacher and mum Steph Challis lives in regional Victoria and is founder of The Phone Pledge program, a group of mums trying to keep their children off screens until at least 16 years of age. She understands why some people see hypocrisy in parents and teachers telling kids not to use their phones when the adults around them are also using the devices. But Ms Challis claims we should be setting an age limit on when to access phones because they pose a greater risk to a child's development. "[Social media is] harming their brain; it's changing the way their brains develop, much more so than it would be for someone who's 25 and above," she says. Part of what has prompted her to found the program is her own teaching experiences with tired students who "openly admit a lot of that [tiredness] is because of their electronic devices". She was also inspired by Jonathan Haidt's hugely popular yet controversial book, The Anxious Generation, and a survey she did that found many parents in her district were similarly worried about their children's phone use. "If we reach parents that were probably going to give their children a smartphone and a TikTok account in grade five [age 10], and they decide to wait until year seven and year eight, that's still progress and that's still something to be celebrated," she says. Anna Lembke is a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and describes the compulsive overconsumption of digital media as a "collective problem" that requires "collective solutions". "It's not enough to just moderate the content or try to limit our time, we need actual physical spaces and times when we all come together with no internet connection," she says. She notes that it's amazing that in "this day and age you can have a spiritual experience just by not carrying your phone with you". "Comedy clubs, music events, all kinds of people are really recognising that what makes for a meaningful gathering of humans is the extent to which they are psychologically investing in the moment." A small French town 50 kilometres south of Paris is going one step further by imposing a local smartphone ban on everyone, regardless of age. Seine Port is home to 2,000 people. Its mayor, Vincent Paul-Petit from the right-wing party Les Républicains, introduced the scheme, which passed a referendum with a slim margin of 54 per cent in favour last year. Individuals are discouraged from scrolling outside the school gates, in shops, cafes, restaurants, parks and even footpaths. "[The ban] was a form of provocation to help everyone wake up to this social issue, which is a huge issue, a huge social difficulty," the mayor says. It has been welcomed by some. "The shopkeepers are very happy with the progress we've felt in the town. They've all put a sticker inside their stores, a big sticker, saying 'screen-free spaces, smartphone-free spaces'," Mr Paul-Petit says. "They appreciate being able to interact with their customers." But not long after the success of the referendum, Mr Paul-Petit discovered he didn't have the power to prohibit smartphone use, so the "ban" has been replaced by a voluntary charter. And he admits there are some who don't want to follow it. "[People] say: 'Hide your phone, the mayor is coming.' … It's rather amusing," he says. Time will tell whether other places follow Mr Paul-Petit's lead. But the debate remains as to whose role it is to limit smartphone and social media use. For example, when legislation was passed in 2024 banning under-16s from accessing some social media, media reports claimed it set "Australia up as a test case for a growing number of governments which have legislated, or have said they plan to legislate, an age restriction on social media". The ban will not take effect until the end of the year. But critics — including Elon Musk, who owns the social media platform X — claim the move is a "backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians". Professor Lembke has praised the Australian government's approach and says when she talked about banning smartphones from schools 15 years ago, "people looked at me like it was absolutely crazy". "Now it's happening, so I'm super hopeful. Humans are adaptable," she says. Others are more sceptical about whether social media age restrictions will be followed by young people. A few teens impacted by the ban say they will find a "secret" way to continue to use social media platforms. Jameson Butler says these decisions should be left to individuals. The choice to consume less technology should be "consensual and empowering", she adds, and not the result of a ban. "I remember honestly being very annoyed every time my parents would try to tell me how bad the smartphone was because it was just … so entertaining," she says. "I didn't want to put it down … And despite all the times my parents tried to warn me and tried to limit my screen time, it wasn't until I reached the conclusion that my phone had been harming me … that I really decided to do something about it." She says that's part of the reason why she and her friends formed the Luddite Club. "What sets us apart from other, offline organisations and foundations … [is] a lot of them centre around parents and parenting," she says. "[But] we see that kids are really not going to always listen to their parents."
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
‘You are a star': A-lister couple's daughter keeps going viral
Romy Mars, the daughter of A-lister director Sofia Coppola and musician Thomas Mars, keeps on going viral. If you've missed the rise of Mars, you're probably just not on social media that much. The 18-year-old has garnered over 25 million likes on TikTok alone. Her parents met on the set of The Virgin Suicides in the late 1990s. Her mum, of course, is the director of acclaimed movies like Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette, and her Dad is the lead singer of the indie French band Phoenix. Her parents didn't tie the knot until 2013, and Mars also has a younger sister, Cosima, and she grew up rubbing shoulders with celebrities because of her parents. It doesn't hurt that she also looks just like her famous mum. The 18-year-old came to prominence, though, back in 2023. When she shared a now-deleted video where she claimed she was grounded because she attempted to charter a helicopter to visit her friend and was caught using her dad's credit card. The clip may have been deleted but it introduced Mars to the masses with a bang, and to this day, no one can be one hundred per cent sure if she was joking or not. These days, she's making a name for herself with her music career. She released a song aptly titled A-lister this year that is getting buzz. Perhaps what makes Mars so refreshing is that she's not shy about acknowledging her famous parents. Earlier this week, she posted a video of herself proudly watching her dad perform on stage, and people loved it. 'Having Thomas Mars as your dad is iconic,' one praised. 'Having him and Sofia Coppola as parents is unreal,' another said. 'Having two iconic parents must be such a blessing,' one said. Aside from acknowledging her famous parents, the 18-year-old uses social media for all the usual stuff that teenagers do. She'll post room tours, videos of her hanging out with friends, or clips to promote her music. In typical teenage girl fashion, she also likes to vaguely mention a messy break-up with an ex, Most of the content she posts is pretty similar to what anyone her age would, but there's always a sprinkling of affluence. She recently shared a video of her trying on the designer brand Chanel and then attending a Chanel ball. People online were nothing short of obsessed. 'You're such an icon, I can't,' one wrote. 'You are a star! We love you.' 'Iconic behaviour,' someone else said.
SBS Australia
an hour ago
- SBS Australia
#90 Talking about role models
This lesson is suitable for intermediate-level learners. After listening, test your knowledge with our quiz. Learning notes Different phrases you can use when talking about people you admire: I really look up to my grandpa. I've always admired him. He's had a big impact on me. I would say she led by example. They didn't just talk — they followed through. She's the kind of person who walks the talk. If you look up to someone , it means you admire them. To speak highly of someone means to talk about them in a very positive way. If you lead by example , you're showing others how to behave by doing the right thing yourself. We say someone follows through when they do what they said they would do. A role model is someone who sets a good example and makes us want to grow and improve. When someone has a big impact on someone, they them really make them think and change them in a meaningful way. In the dialogue Allan and Claire use the present perfect tense (have/has + past participle) to talk about things that started in the past and are continuing to have an impact on the present, and the past simple (verb + ed) to talk about thing that happened in the past and are finished. When Allan talks about his feelings for his grandfather and his impact on him, he uses the present perfect because he still has these feelings: Allan: I've always admired him. (have + admired) He's had a big impact on me (has + had) But this grandfather has passed away, and so when Claire talks about what his grandfather did in the past to cause such feelings, she uses the past simple: Claire: … someone who always led by example (led) Allan: .. He didn't just talk —he followed through….. (did + not + talk; follow + ed) …person who walked the talk (walked) Cultural information: Baker Boy is a proud Yolngu rapper, dancer, and artist whose powerful work has inspired audiences across Australia and beyond. Blending English with Yolngu Matha—his traditional language—his music brings a unique voice to the Australian hip-hop scene while celebrating and sharing Indigenous culture. A multi-award-winning performer, Baker Boy was named Young Australian of the Year in 2019. Discover more about his music and story at . Transcript: (Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript) SBS acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country and their connections and continuous care for the skies, lands, and waterways throughout Australia. Think of someone you admire. Someone who taught you, helped you, inspired you, or showed you how to be a better person? My name's Kate, and I have a lot of different role models. A role model is someone who sets a good example and makes us want to grow and improve so that we can be more like them. They could be a family member, a teacher, a friend, or even someone we've never met. In this episode, we'll learn some easy ways to talk in English about our role models. You'll hear useful phrases, real examples, and a few stories from me too! Let's get started. Today, I'm taking you to a small, cosy café. The soft clink of coffee cups and the low hum of conversation fill the air. Allan and Claire are sitting by the window, watching people stroll past as they chat. The smell of fresh coffee beans drifts around them. Claire wraps her hands around a warm mug, smiling as Allan begins to talk about someone close to his heart. Allan: I miss my grandpa. I always looked up to him. Claire: Yeah, you always speak so highly of him. Allan: I do. I've always admired him. He's had a big impact on me. Claire: Would you say he's someone who always led by example? Allan: Yes, I would. He didn't just talk—he followed through. He was the kind of person who walked the talk. Beautiful conversation, isn't it? It made me think about my number one role model — my mum. She's has always been the kind of woman who moves mountains for her children. No matter how hard life got when we were young, she never gave up. She worked long hours, cooked and cleaned at home, and still found time to support me and my brother every step of the way. Whenever something is difficult and I feel like life is too hard, I think of her — and I keep going. She's truly my inspiration, and now I'm getting emotional. Let's get to work and take a closer look at some of the useful phrases Allan and Claire used, so you can talk about your own role models too. Allan first said, I miss my grandpa. I always looked up to him. If you look up to someone, it means you admire them. You think they're a great person, and you respect what they do or how they live. And when you admire someone, you might try to be more like them or learn from their example. Claire then said, You always speak so highly of him. To speak highly of someone means to talk about them in a very positive way. When you speak highly of someone, you talk about all the things you admire about them — their qualities, actions, and character. Allan speaks highly of his grandpa because he respects and looks up to him. So, when you admire someone, you often speak highly of them to others. Next, we have, I've always admired him. He's had a big impact on me. Allan's grandpa had a big impact on him. When someone has a big impact on you, they make you think and they change you in a meaningful way. They influence your thoughts, your actions, and even your values. This big impact can be a result of something someone says, or something someone does, or even just how they live their life. For example, have you heard of Baker Boy? He's a Yolngu rapper, dancer, and artist that has inspired so many people. His music blends English and his native language, Yolngu Matha. Baker Boy brings Indigenous culture to the Australian hip-hop scene and has won many awards. He was celebrated as the Young Australian of the Year in 2019. He's young, but definitely a role model! Let's go back to our dialogue, Claire said, Would you say he's someone who led by example? Led by example. If you lead by example, you show others how to behave by doing the right thing yourself. Instead of just telling people what to do, you show them the right thing to do through your own actions. Can you think of someone who has led by example? Just like Allan's grandpa, who, as Allan says, He didn't just talk—he followed through. He was the kind of person who walked the talk. He followed through. We say someone follows through when they do what they said they would do. So, someone who walks the talk doesn't just make promises — but keeps them. When someone follows through, it means that you can trust what they say because they actually take real action. We can also say that someone walks the talk when their actions match their words. Sign up for previews, updates and to provide feedback. A big thank you to Paul Nicholson and Lily O'Sullivan who voiced the characters of Allan and Claire, and Professor Lynda Yates was our educational consultant. For more on NAIDOC Week, check out Celebrating NAIDOC week | SBS NITV. LISTEN TO SBS English 08/09/2023 27:29 English
