‘One foot in the grave’

Linda Evangelista has revealed her secret battle with breast cancer, saying she has undergone a mastectomy and chemotherapy in a bid to beat the disease — but still fears for her future.

The supermodel, 58, disclosed her harrowing health ordeal in a new interview with WSJ Magazine on Tuesday, revealing that doctors first detected the cancer during an annual mammogram in Dec. 2018

“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,” Evangelista told the publication.

The catwalk queen subsequently believed she was cancer-free and “set for life” — but her troubles were just beginning.

In Oct. 2022, the mother-of-one discovered a lump on her chest and immediately had an MRI scan. The results revealed there was cancer in her pectoral muscle.

“Dig a hole in my chest,” Evangelista recalled telling her surgeon. “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.”

Evangelista subsequently underwent radiation and chemotherapy, which caused her to lose her hair.

“This is all new hair,” she told WSJ Magazine. “It came back very dark. It’s even curlier than it used to be. The first time, I lost all the hair on top of my head, like my grandfather did.”

After completing treatment, the Canada-born model was told that her prognosis was “good” — a word which still alarms her.

“Not ‘great’? Why isn’t it great?” she asked her surgeon, who told her: “Once it’s come back, there’s a chance [it will return again].”

While she is now in remission, Evangelista says she has a “horrible Oncotype score” — a number that represents the recurrence risk of cancer.

With her future “uncertain,” Evangelista believes every day is “previous.”

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

Evangelista is mom to 16-year-old son Augustin, whom she shares with her billionaire ex, François-Henri Pinault.

The supermodel didn’t disclose how her son has dealt with her cancer battle, but she did open up about blending families with Pinault.

The French businessman is now married to Salma Hayek, with whom he shares a daughter.

“I love that woman,” Evangelista enthused of the “Frida” actress. “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.” 

Meanwhile, Evangelista told WSJ Magazine that she kept the cancer battle private in a bid to avoid media scrutiny.

“I’ve kept it quiet. Only a handful of people knew. And I’m just not one of those people who has to share everything,” she stated, “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.”

Several years ago, Evangelista retreated from the limelight after claiming a cosmetic “fat-freezing” procedure by CoolScultping left her “permanently deformed” and “brutally disfigured.”

She filed a $50 million lawsuit against CoolSculpting’s owner for emotional distress and lost income, which she settled in July last year.

Speaking of the procedure in her interview with The Wall Street Journal Magazine, Evangelista regrets that she succumbed to the temptation to tinker with her physical appearance.

Evangelista had only done what countless others have. Yet she has expressed feelings of shame and embarrassment. Did she really do anything wrong?

“I took a drink of the magic potion,” she stated. “It just backfired on me.”

Now, Evangelista is back in the spotlight ahead of the release of the AppleTV+ docuseries, “The Supermodels,” which hits the steamer on Sept. 20.

The series traces the rise of Evangelista and her contemporaries, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell. The quartet of catwalk queens appears in the September issue of Vogue.