"My first booker in Paris, at the very, very very beginning of my career, died of AIDS. It was the first time I had heard about AIDS. Everyone was still quite uncertain about what it was. It was still new. I remember visiting him up until his final days. I've had friends pass away from it, and friends of friends and colleagues, so I've been touched persoanlly and professionally. But really, I'm doing my part because I think it's a global issue. I think everybody has to do something. There is nothing beautiful about AIDS. We still live in a world where the stigma surrounding AIDS is truly ugly. I hope to make a difference."
"I got so sick of my face and the flaws."
"I've learned to live in the moment, something I never used to do. I was always regretting the past, worrying about the future driven to go on working, taking every job. I took every job they threw at me because I thought this was going to be the last year. I grew up the day I gave up modeling (in 1998). I realized that what I wanted was a normal life and a routine. But then, after all the hard work and pressure -- listen, I used to take Concorde like people take the bus - I became really idle, and that didn't work for me, either."
LINDA EVANGELISTA: Who do you most admire?
PEDRO ALMODOVAR: There are many directors I admire: Scorcese, for exemple, and I very much like Tarantino - his films are fantastic. I would like to work with Harvey Keitel and Barbara Hershey, but I would also like to work with you, Linda. You would make a wonderful housewife. There would be no point in casting you as a top model, that would be meaningless. I would like to cast you as a regular sub-urban housewife with problems. You know, with a sexy, beautiful girl like you, the audience wants to see you are human, so I would show your suffering, and show that just beautiful doesn't mean you have no soul or pain.
(Elle 1996, Linda Evangelista interviews Pedro Almodovar)
Summer in Tokyo at 16 years old: "When I got there, I freaked out. It wasn't what they'd said it would be. They wanted nude and funny stuff. They asked me to strip to take my measurements, even though they had them already" Put up for the night in an apartment, she escaped and walked the streets, looking for a phone booth. When she told her parents that a man had helped her and she was phoning from his apartment, they went crazy. She returned home after a day and half. Even so, her mother let her have another try. When she finished school, Evangelista went to New York, on the condition that she would come home every weekend.
"One of my first jobs was in Italy and that's where I saw cocaine for the first time. There was a murder in our group that weekend. I decided then and there that I would never do drugs. I have anxiety attacks, so there's no way I could do them.
"I accept that keeping in shape doesn't come naturally, so I work hard. I hit the gym every day: Pilates, yoga, weights. I used to love wine but I've stopped drinking. I quit smoking and I'll never start again."
