Mariska Hargitay thinks people confuse her with Olivia Benson.

The 61-year-old actress - who is best known for playing Olivia in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit since 1999 - admitted she is much more "scared" than her alter ego, although she's learned some important lessons from her formidable character.

Speaking on stage at Hello Sunshine's annual Shine Away summit, she said: "People, they project on me, they think that I'm Olivia Benson and I'm bada** and I'm fearless.

"I'm like, 'Oh, I'm not fearless. I'm super scared' -- but the motto that I have is 'feel the fear and do it anyway.'

"And I learned that from Olivia Benson."

Mariska previously revealed how she suffered "secondary trauma" as a result of the long running role, as it can be hard to shake off the show's tough plots surrounding abuse and domestic violence.

Speaking to Selena Gomez for Interview magazine in 2024, she said: "That's been a process. When I started the show, I wasn't aware of how deeply it would go into me. My husband Peter is always like, anytime I go anywhere, my first question is, What's the crime rate here?' So it's on the brain.

"There's been times when I didn't know how to protect myself, and I think I was definitely a victim of secondary trauma from being inundated with these stories and knowing that they were true.

"Those were the parts that I didn't know how to metabolise, just because of the sheer volume of it."

However, Mariska noted there has been a positive side to the gritty role because it inspired her to create the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004.

She added: "That's also why I started Joyful Heart [Foundation], so I would feel like, well, at least I'm doing something about it...

"I learned that one in three women will be assaulted, and one in six men.

"That's when I started going, 'I have to do something,' because the show was obviously tackling the subject matter, but when I learned the statistics, I said, 'Why isn't everyone talking about this?' And if I didn't know, I figured nobody knows what an epidemic violence against women is."