Linda Evangelista opens up about cancer battle, double mastectomy & becoming ‘disfigured’ recluse after botched lipo
SHE is regarded as one of the most influential models of all time.
But when Linda Evangelista was struck with breast cancer, she had to deal with it the same as any other woman.
The 58-year-old supermodel had a double mastectomy after being diagnosed in 2018 — and then underwent gruelling chemotherapy and radiotherapy last year for cancer of the pectoral muscle.
Now, in the wake of her treatment, she wants to help other women and warns: “Please do not skip your annual mammograms. Early detection is everything.”
It is a message The Sun on Sunday has been spreading since the launch of our Get Checked campaign with charity CoppaFeel! in 2020 in response to the number of women putting off checks with GPs despite having symptoms.
Recalling the moment she discovered a lump during a routine mammogram, Linda says: “Every time you go, you think, ‘Is this the time they’re gonna find something?’.
“And it was, ‘We think we see something, we want to get more images’. The room starts to spin. But they said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s early’.
“I had a lumpectomy but after it was biopsied the margins weren’t good.”
Linda, who has privately battled health conditions including lung issues throughout her career, took the decision to have the double mastectomy a month later.
In an interview last week ahead of October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, softly spoken Linda says of her decision: “Because of my lung issues and radiation, I said, ‘I’m gonna be so radical’.
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“Because I did not want breast cancer to kill me, and I thought I was taking care of it.
‘I was half dead’
“I was happy with my decision and I thought I was set for life. I wasn’t going to die of breast cancer.”
But her battle was far from over. Linda found another lump when she got a call to say her 16-year-old son Augustin had gone missing during a school trip.
Panicking, she pushed her hand on her chest to cope with the stress, and felt the irregularity.
Speaking from New York, she recalls: “I was having heart palpitations and I’m rubbing my chest saying, ‘Calm down, calm down’.
“That is when I felt the lump. It was a bump, and I was not sure so I am pressing on it.
“I’m like, ‘Is this where my rib was removed?’. I had a rib removed for one of my many, many, many lung surgeries.
“Throughout my whole career, I was having lung surgeries and other surgeries I kept quiet about. Work ended up being my escape from my life and my reality because it was just all fun and fantasy for me.”
After further tests her doctor called with the news she had been dreading.
Linda recalls: “They said, ‘You have cancer again. And it is cancer of the muscle’. I’d never heard of that.”
As she went through chemotherapy she admits she felt “half dead” and did not want to celebrate Thanksgiving.
But actress Salma Hayek flew to New York to care for her.
Salma, 57, who is married to Linda’s ex, businessman Francois-Henri Pinault, and is step-mum to Augustin, 17, cooked Linda’s favourite meal.
Linda says: “Salma called and I said, ‘We’re not doing Thanksgiving this year’. I was half dead. I couldn’t. There’s no way I could do it. And she said, ‘Yes, you are. I’ll be there’.
“I said, ‘Please, please don’t. Please don’t’. And she said, ‘No, no, no, it’s important’ — and poof, she was there. She cooked. I said, ‘I want your Mexican chicken’ and she put on a whole shindig all by herself. I don’t know how she navigated my kitchen so quickly. She did a great job.”
Linda is speaking ahead of the publication of her new book, Linda Evangelista Photographed by Steven Meisel, which chronicles her life as a supermodel.
In her heyday, she was so famous that even her hairstyle had its own name — and now there is a wig called The Evangelista.
Linda says: “I would have got it during chemotherapy had I known. I was bald, just about.”
Although to her millions of admirers Canadian-born Linda has always been perfect, she has secretly been plagued with self-doubt.
In 2015, a fat-busting treatment called CoolSculpting left her in agony — and she became a recluse for years.
She says the treatment went disastrously wrong and resulted in a string of operations. She explains: “CoolSculpting is for small amounts of fat, and the commercial said ‘non-invasive, no downtime’. What could go wrong?
“The warning that they give you today, they did not give back then. They added the warning of paradoxical adipose hyperplasia after I came forward.
‘Tired of hiding’
“The doctor didn’t tell me about it. I didn’t think it would end up destroying me.
“I then had invasive surgery to try to correct it two times. I wore girdles for eight weeks — and it didn’t correct the situation.
“I just got tired of hiding. I didn’t want to be miserable any more. I wanted to live again.”
Linda — who famously said she and fellow supermodels Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Claudia Schiffer don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day — started modelling when she was a schoolgirl.
One of her first contracts was in Japan when she was 16.
She says: “That was a big mistake. Big, big mistake. They were not legit.
“They’re like, ‘Take your clothes off — we need your measurements. You’re going to do nudes, right?’.
“I was underage and they were aggressive with me. Linda ended up roaming the streets of Japan.
She says: “I met this really nice man. And he said, ‘You can use my phone’. I called my mother and she said, ‘Get out right now’.
“I went to the Canadian Embassy and they helped me get home.”
Then she went to New York to work for Elite modelling agency but recalls: “They said, ‘Can you lose some weight? Can you lose 5lb?’.
“I didn’t know how to lose weight but I said yes.”
Finally, at 22, she worked with Vogue and overheard the team talking about her.
She says: “They kept talking about my gums. I was trying not to smile, but I didn’t realise they loved my gums.
“And they were going on about my legs. My whole life I was teased about my scrawny legs. My father used to call them ‘tomato sticks’ because he used to grow tomatoes. But I didn’t know that they loved my legs.”
Now she is giving some of the proceeds of her new book to women who are struggling with the way they look following cancer treatment.
She says: “I really want it to go to women who can’t afford wigs or prosthetics. I want it to go towards things that can help you overcome it.
“I know what a shock it is to not have something that was there before.”
After such a gruelling few years, Linda finally feels good about herself and there is only one last dream to fulfil.
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She says: “I hope I get really old.”
- For more information on breast cancer, see coppafeel.org.
