The show brought her awards, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a spot in the cultural imagination. Taylor Swift, who famously named one of her cats Olivia Benson, recruited Hargitay for the video for her song “Bad Blood” in 2015 . More recently, Hargitay starred with Ice-T in a “SVU”-themed “Game of Thrones” parody on “Saturday Night Live.”

More meaningfully, the character at times has been a source of comfort for real-life victims and survivors. In the 2016 book “We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out,” a writer discussed how “Olivia Benson shattered the self-blame and uncertainty I had endured for years.”

Hargitay said that viewers often approach her to share their personal experiences with sexual assault. The topic, and that of Benson’s broader impact with women and survivors of abuse, makes her emotional.

“It became very apparent to me early how much, culturally, we needed this character who relentlessly fights and advocates for women and for survivors, and who does it with compassion,” she said through tears. “Somebody who is unequivocally committed to righting wrongs, who believes survivors, who’s aware of the healing in it.”

At her foundation’s “Being Believed” panel in May, where Hargitay spoke alongside the author Roxane Gay and the prosecutor Kym Worthy of Wayne County , Mich., some women disclosed their assaults for the first time. She has also made the widespread rape-kit backlog at police departments a personal focus — her documentary “I Am Evidence” investigates that issue in particular.

“If somebody’s rape kit is not tested, what’s that saying?” she said. “That says you don’t matter, and no one should experience not mattering.”