MARISKA HARGITAY IS AWAITING HER ‘ROAD TRIP’

“I was 16 before I became interested in what sort of a person my mother had been,” said Mariska Hargitay. “The kids I grew up with didn’t know who she was. And I was just a child when she died.”

Dark-haired Hargitay, now 22 and in her last year at UCLA, was 3 when her mother, the ‘50s blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield, was killed in a car crash. She was then raised by her father, former Mr. Universe-turned-actor Mickey Hargitay, and his second wife.

“I saw all my mother’s old films on television,” said Hargitay the other day. “And my father always spoke a lot about her. But I remember almost nothing he said. My feeling is she was a lot smarter than people gave her credit for being. She knew what she wanted.”

The old house on Sunset Boulevard in which she grew up--it used to be painted pink, Mansfield’s favorite color--now belongs to singer Engelbert Humperdinck.

“I’m friends with his daughter,” said Hargitay, “so I’ve been back there for parties. Now it seems much smaller than I remembered.”

Hargitay is taking her first steps in acting. She had small parts in “Star 80” and “Ghoulies” and has two new films awaiting release--”Road Trip,” directed by Steve Carver, and “Summer Release,” directed by Terry Carr.

“I’m not interested in being a star like my mother was,” she said. “That was the aim of the ‘50s, I guess. Me, I just want to become a good actress.”

Because of her father’s Hungarian background, she speaks fluent Hungarian; she’s also learning Italian. “I want very much to work in Europe. I love it there. My father made many movies in Italy, so I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid.

“But I know I have to be careful. I’ve been approached by not very reputable producers in Europe who just want to capitalize on the fact that I’m Jayne Mansfield’s daughter. I don’t need that.”

The only time she gets discouraged, she said, is when she goes to auditions and producers say, “I thought you’d be a blonde like your mother.”

“I want to be accepted for myself,” she said. “One day I know I will be.”

LONG REST: Albert Finney is one actor who believes in taking long breaks between acting chores. For the last 15 months, he has done nothing but wander the world. But now he’s busy rehearsing a new play for London, “Orphans,” in which he’ll play an American gangster.

“I wasn’t consciously looking for something to do,” he said last week. “I was in the 15th month of my sabbatical, and rather hoping it would last longer. See, I prefer to be a rudderless wanderer rather than a committed thespian.”

ORIENT BOUND: David Soul is off to Hong Kong to star in “Harry’s Hong Kong” for Aaron Spelling and ABC-TV. It’s his first visit to the colony, and he plans a side trip to China when director Jerry London wraps filming.

“Harry’s an interesting character,” said Soul, “a kind of Rick type (Rick of ‘Casablanca,’ that is). So he’ll be fun to play.”

Arrested in Pittsburgh last year for disrupting a church service attended by steel officials from that city--he was protesting the plight of workers laid off from steel mills--Soul last month was sentenced to two years’ probation and fined $1,000.

“I expect some people wonder why I would stick my neck out over a thing like that,” he said. “But when you care about important issues, you don’t first wonder: How will this affect my career? Anyway, apparently it hasn’t.”

NEW SUITE: Kurt Wachtveitl, manager of the Oriental hotel in Bangkok where several of the suites are named after authors--Maugham and Conrad among them--was in Los Angeles this week talking about his latest addition: A suite named for Barbara Cartland, Britain’s queen of romance novelists.

It’s done entirely in pink.

When Cartland was at the hotel last month, Wachtveitl arranged a small reception for her to meet Gore Vidal, who also was staying there. “She was very late turning up,” said Wachtveitl. “That upset Gore. Now he’s asking for a suite to be named after him, too.”

AT LAST: The best remark about last week’s marriage of director Nicolas Roeg and actress Theresa Russell--who’ve been together for six years and have two children--came from composer Stanley Myers, who gave the reception for them.

“I think they feel the birth of their second son marks the end of the courtship phase,” he said.