Gisele Bündchen opens up about Tom Brady split and those 'hate'-driven rumors

Supermodel Gisele Bündchen is living la pura vida in Costa Rica, blissfully far from the tabloid drama swirling around her and ex-husband Tom Brady following their high-profile split in October

At least that's what a Vanity Fair profile published Wednesday would have us believe. (She also wants to release a cookbook and play a superhero.)

The fashion icon got candid about the ill-fated marriage, its dissolution and the media frenzy consuming it in a sprawling interview that was filled with raw emotions and juicy revelations about her life with the football superstar. The supermodel is said to be in "mourning," according to writer Michelle Ruiz, but is working on letting go of the negative and embracing a new and happier phase.

"It’s like a death and a rebirth,” Bündchen told Ruiz, "the death of my dream."

The 42-year-old said she "did everything" she could to keep her life going "a certain way" but was only able to get so far, offering the most candid narrative yet about her split from the former Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New England Patriots quarterback.

“You give everything you got to achieve your dream,” she continued. “You give a hundred percent of yourself, and it’s heartbreaking when it doesn’t end up the way you hoped for, and worked for, but you can only do your part.”

The comely couple has been gossip fodder for nearly two decades. The former Victoria's Secret Angel, who for years topped the highest-paid supermodels lists, was set up on a blind date with the NFL quarterback by a mutual friend when they were in their 20s and she was a year out of a relationship with actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Soon after Bündchen and Brady started dating, the athlete learned that his ex, actor Bridget Moynahan, was pregnant with his son Jack — a "challenging situation for all of us," but one that Bündchen said she embraced, treating Jack as her "bonus child" and offering as much support as she could to Moynahan since then.

After her nearly 13-year marriage to Brady — plenty of on-field Super Bowl celebrations, joint red-carpet appearances, two more kids, his retirement followed by his unretirement and numerous rumors about trouble in paradise — the couple finally called it quits with an announcement in October that they had finalized their divorce and would focus on co-parenting.

The Brazilian model's devotion to their marriage was apparent as Brady accumulated Vince Lombardi trophies and a near-sacrosanct sports reputation. The model slowed down her lucrative career in favor of Brady's, stopped walking the runway in 2015 and moved around from Boston to Tampa, Fla., to support him.

She also set the record straight on the “very hurtful” media narrative that their marriage fell apart when Brady rescinded his retirement just 40 days after announcing it. (He announced in February that he would stop playing "for good.") She said marriages aren’t built or broken overnight and that her being cast as a sidelined shrew was “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Listen, I have always cheered for him, and I would continue forever,” she said. "If there’s one person I want to be the happiest in the world, it’s him, believe me. I want him to achieve and to conquer. I want all his dreams to come true. That’s what I want, really, from the bottom of my heart.”

Instead, the runway star alluded to a gradual drifting apart. Her goal, she said, has long been to make life harmonious for those she loves, even when that meant back-burning her more-flexible career to prioritize her kids and marriage. She said that instead of growing together, they seemed to grow apart and "just wanted different things."

"That doesn’t mean you don’t love the person. It just means that in order for you to be authentic and truly live the life that you want to live, you have to have somebody who can meet you in the middle, right? It’s a dance. It’s a balance.

“When you love someone, you don’t put them in a jail and say, ‘You have to live this life.’ You set them free to be who they are, and if you want to fly the same direction, then that’s amazing," she added.

Bündchen also evaded inquiries about rabid reports that she is dating one of her children's jiu-jitsu instructors, Joaquim Valente, instead heaping praise on him as their teacher and "most importantly" as a "person that I admire and that I trust." She also shut down a recent Daily Mail report that linked her to Brady's friend, real estate developer Jeffrey Soffer.

What gets to her the most? False stories about her that predated the divorce and "the hate" they continue to be laced with.

"Seeing lies being created all the time about yourself is not easy," she added, before deciding to “take the high road” for the sake of their children. “I’m a simple girl who wants to be in nature — leave me alone. I just want to go do my job and raise my children in peace.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.