every breath you take

Linda Evangelista Doesn’t Date Anymore: “I Don’t Want to Hear Somebody Breathing”

It’s giving “I don’t want somebody in my house.”
Linda Evangelista
Noam Galai/Getty Images.

Linda Evangelista is saying the quiet part loud, though perhaps not quite as loud as a romantic partner snores.

The supermodel, who continues to live in her era of personal truth-telling after opening up about a CoolSculpting procedure that she says left her “permanently disfigured” in 2016 and two bouts with breast cancer in the last half-decade, told the UK’s Sunday Times in a new interview that she is “not interested” in dating, and hasn’t dated since “definitely before the CoolSculpting.”

“I don’t want to sleep with anybody anymore,” Evangelista told the outlet. “I don’t want to hear somebody breathing.”

Evangelista was formerly married to Gérald Marie, whom she divorced in 1993. She later was in a relationship with François-Henri Pinault in 2005 and 2006, with whom she has a son, Augustin. Pinault is now married to Salma Hayek, and Evangelista has opened up about their blended family and spending holidays together.

She said that she had been depressed and a recluse after experiencing the side effects of her cosmetic procedure, and that it was her son asking her, “remember when you used to have fun?” that prompted her to make changes in how she lived her life.

“That was a wake-up call,” she said. “I was like, no more woe is me. I’m going to fucking fix this.”

“I don’t blame myself anymore,” she said. "I’m not completely rid of it, but I work hard at getting rid of the guilt and the shame. And I’m not letting it ruin my life. I wouldn’t have stayed locked up if I’d known how many people cared.”

Evangelista is just the latest in a line of successful women who have spoken out about living life without some of the annoyances a romantic partner can bring. In 2016, Whoopi Goldberg famously said that despite having been married multiple times before, “I’m much happier on my own.”

“I can spend as much time with somebody as I want to spend, but I’m not looking to be with somebody forever or live with someone,” she told the New York Times Magazine. “I don’t want somebody in my house.”