Supermodel Linda Evangelista Had Breast Cancer Twice in 5 Years

Linda Evangelista, the supermodel made famous in the 1990s, revealed in an interview that she survived breast cancer twice in five years.

The fashion photographer described her diagnoses and multiple health challenges in an interview with The Wall Street Journal Magazine that was published on Tuesday.

Ms. Evangelista, 58, said she was first diagnosed in 2018 after an annual mammogram. The magazine noted that it was the first time she had spoken publicly about her cancer.

Ms. Evangelista did not immediately respond for comment on Tuesday.

In response to her diagnosis, she said, she chose to undergo a bilateral mastectomy, “thinking I was good and set for life. Breast cancer was not going to kill me.”

However, four years later, in 2022, she learned that the cancer had returned, this time in her pectoral muscle.

She recalled telling her surgeon, “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,” she had said to her doctors. “Do you understand me? I’m not dying from this.”

After a second surgical procedure, Ms. Evangelista in the interview described her current prognosis as “good,” as told by her post-cancer care oncologist.

However, she said, her doctor had given her a “horrible oncotype score,” a number that represents the risk of cancer recurrence.

Still, she said, the uncertainty has made her days more valuable.

“I know I have one foot in the grave, but I’m totally in celebration mode,” she said.

Breast cancer diagnoses have not been the only health issues for Ms. Evangelista in recent years.

Two years ago in an Instagram post, she revealed that side effects from CoolSculpting, a “fat-freezing” procedure, had left her “permanently deformed” and “brutally disfigured” as she had developed paradoxical adipose hyperplasia, an effect in which firm tissue masses develop in the treatment areas.