Linda Evangelista Has Had Cancer Twice Since 2018

Amid Linda Evangelista's highly publicized struggles with a bad reaction to the CoolSculpting fat freezing procedure, the supermodel was also undergoing a much more difficult struggle in private: two cancer diagnoses. In 2018, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she tells the Wall Street Journal Magazine in a wide-ranging interview. That was more than two years after her CoolSculpting experience, which she says was not connected, and she never revealed the diagnosis publicly. She had a bilateral mastectomy, but then, in July 2022, she found a lump on her chest and was ultimately diagnosed with cancer in her pectoral muscle.

After surgery, radiation, and chemo, the 58-year-old was told her prognosis is good. "Not 'great'? Why isn't it great?" she asked her doctor, who told her, she says. "Well, once it's come back, there's a chance." She says she also has "a horrible oncotype score," which represents a person's recurrence risk of cancer: "I know I have one foot in the grave, but I'm totally in celebration mode," she says, noting that the experience has made her appreciate every day. The interview was done in advance of Evangelista's upcoming book with fashion photographer Steven Meisel, with whom she's collaborated for decades. Read the sit-down in full here. (More Linda Evangelista stories.)