Linda Evangelista Reveals Secret Past Battle with Breast Cancer

Supermodel Linda Evangelista is opening up about her past battle with breast cancer, and a new cancer scare that brought back bad memories.

Evangelista, 58, tells WSJ Magazine she was diagnosed in 2018 and underwent a double mastectomy.

At the time, she said, “The margins were not good, and due to other health factors, without hesitation, because I wanted to put everything behind me and not to have to deal with this, I opted for a bilateral mastectomy. Thinking I was good and set for life. Breast cancer was not going to kill me.”

But this past July, Linda found a lump in her chest and had an MRI.

The results came back as cancer in her pectoral muscle.

Evangelista was adamant that doctors do everything they could to remove it. She told her doctor, “Dig a hole in my chest… I don't want it to look pretty. I want you to excavate. I want to see a hole in my chest when you're done. Do you understand me? I'm not dying from this.'”

Afterward, doctors told Linda that her prognosis was good. She wanted to know why it wasn’t “great.”

They told her, “Once it's come back, there's a chance.”

She explained that her oncotype score, which predicts cancer reoccurrence, was “horrible.”

Despite the news, she’s staying upbeat. “I know I have one foot in the grave, but I'm totally in celebration mode,” the star said.

Linda kept her cancer battle private and “only a handful of people knew” about her medical condition.

She said Salma Hayek was one friend who was there for her during chemo.

Evangelista previously dated Salma’s husband François-Henri Pinault, and they share son Augustin James, 16.

Linda said of the actress, “I love that woman. She's a woman's woman. Just like me, [she's] so family-oriented, and so positive. She's a blessing to us… She was very, very generous and kind to me while I was going through my chemo.”

Evangelista shot to fame as a 1990s supermodel but stepped out of the spotlight after she says a cosmetic treatment left her “brutally disfigured.” She later reached a settlement with the company.