WONDER WOMAN - Mariska Hargitay

THE LAW & ORDER: SVU STAR CELEBRATES 25 YEARS OF HER DREAM ROLE, HER 60TH BIRTHDAY AND HER ONE-OF-A-KIND SUPERPOWER: 'I LEAD WITH MY HEART'

- LIZ MCNEIL, ALEX ROSS

From the moment she first read the script for Law & Order: SVU. Mariska Hargitay felt deeply connected to it and to Olivia Benson. "I couldn't believe they were dealing with sexual assault on television," she says. I loved that there was this empathetic character. How strong she was.

My manager at the time said, ‘Mariska, it’s very dark. You’re funny and light and joyful. I don’t think the material is going to resonate for you.’ I called him back and said it couldn’t resonate more. It felt right on every level.”

That was just the beginning of what Hargitay calls her “parallel journey” with the NYPD Special Victims Unit detective at the heart of the hit NBC series, which returns on Jan. 18 for its 25th season, making Olivia the longest-running character on a prime-time drama in TV history. “There’s a thing, WWOBD—What would Olivia Benson do?” says Hargitay, 59. “The fans would always talk about it, and one day it hit me: I also have those moments where I’ve sort of slipped into her. If there’s a crisis, I just take over and lead like that. Being strong and fearless. It’s sort of this perfect feminist story. I’ve lived it on SVU and in my own life.” When Hargitay started on the show in 1999, she was second on the call sheet to costar Christopher Meloni, who had more experience. “I was trying to catch up,” she says. Just as her character rose through the ranks to become squad captain after Meloni’s departure in 2011, so did Hargitay as she became SVU’s lead. “As I became more comfortable with the character,” she says, “you saw this powerful woman emerge.”