Linda Evangelista reveals long, private battle with breast cancer

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

(CNN) — Linda Evangelista has revealed that she’s been secretly treated for breast cancer over the past year — and that it’s the second time she’s been diagnosed with the illness.

The supermodel told the Wall Street Journal that she first underwent a bilateral mastectomy after an annual mammogram detected the cancer in December 2018. She thought she “was good and set for life,” she explained, but last July she discovered a new lump on her chest. Now, she says, her prognosis is “good” having undergone more surgery, chemo and radiation.

“Only a handful of people knew. And I’m just not one of those people who has to share everything,” Evangelista told WSJ. “I thought to myself, I will share this one day but while I am going through it, absolutely not. I don’t want the ‘Daily Mail’ waiting outside my door like they do every time something happens.”

Evangelista’s disclosure is part of a long, personal interview with the publication ahead of the release of a new book about her career-long professional relationship with photographer Steven Meisel.

For the magazine’s digital cover of the Men’s Style fall issue, Evangelista poses for a romantic set of black-and-white images, lensed by Meisel, showing her in bed. Her hair, she told WSJ, is “all new” after chemo. “It came back very dark. It’s even curlier than it used to be.”

Staging a return

Over the past year, Evangelista has made a comeback in fashion — including a vibrant British Vogue cover by Meisel last August — after a period of reclusion. In 2021, she revealed that she was separately dealing with paradoxical adipose hyperplasia (PAH), a rare side effect of the body-contouring procedure CoolSculpting, which she said left her “brutally disfigured” from the swelling and thickening of fatty tissue.

“I took a drink of the magic potion,” she told WSJ, referring to the 1992 film “Death Becomes Her,” in which a youth-granting potion grants immortality to two women in a love triangle — but with macabre side effects.

Last July, Evangelista announced she had settled a $50 million suit against the firm Zeltiq Aesthetics over the cosmetic procedure gone wrong, but did not reveal the terms of the agreement.

The model has since booked several high-profile gigs, including a recent Vogue cover alongside Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford (all of whom will star in a forthcoming four-part Apple TV+ series “The Super Models”) and a spot closing out Fendi’s runway show last September in a surprise return to the runway.

Amid all of her health troubles, she’s had to shake off the renewed scrutiny of the Internet and tabloids. The voluminous gown she wore during the Fendi show drew snarky responses, she recalled.

The comments asked, “‘What’s she hiding under that dress?’” she recalled. “If they only knew — my (post-surgical) drainage tubes had just been pulled,” she said.

On her cancer prognosis being “good” but not “great” moving forward, she added: “I know I have one foot in the grave, but I’m totally in celebration mode.”

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