Mariska Hargitay—who has portrayed Olivia Benson on ‘Law & Order: SVU’ since 1999—revealed she once considered walking away from the hit show. “The comedy thing was painful to me,” she told Variety in an Aug. 19 interview, “because I felt like I was only exercising one part of myself. People would say, ‘You need to get off that show and do comedy. You need to get off that show and have a talk show.’” But even when she told her pal Julianna Margulies that she was considering moving on from the series, which first premiered in 1999, she knew in her heart of hearts she “wasn’t ready to leave.” She explained, “Because I loved it. And then I got to do all this other stuff, and that’s why I don’t think about leaving right now.” As the 62-year-old learned with time, sticking with the NBC show—which also stars Christopher Meloni, Dann Florek, Richard Belzer and Ice-T—doesn’t mean she has to sacrifice other creative ventures. “Do I want to quit now? No,” she said. “Why? I made a movie while s...