To most people, Gisele Bündchen appears to have long enjoyed an enviable life, starting in the late 1990s when the supermodel first became famous as the “boobs from Brazil.”

Leonardo DiCaprio and girlfriend Gisele Bundchen attend a Los Angeles Lakers game against the Memphis Grizzlies in 2004. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images) 

Credited with ushering in a sexy, athletic look to replace the fashion industry’s “heroin chic” of the 1990s, Bündchen in 2000 won both a record $25 million contract with Victoria’s Secret and the heart of the world’s most eligible young bachelor, Leonardo DiCaprio, People reported.

But as Bündchen describes in an interview with People and in a new memoir, her glamorous supermodel life, her closeness to her family back in Brazil and her relationship with DiCaprio didn’t lead to her feeling settled or at peace.

In fact, Bündchen — now 38 and married to star New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady — started to suffer panic attacks, as she told People and as she writes in her memoir, “Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life.”

“I had a wonderful position in my career, and I was very close to my family, and I always considered myself a positive person, so I was really beating myself up. Like, ‘Why should I be feeling this?’ I felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel bad,” Bündchen told People.

In her memoir, the mother of two also explained how the panic attacks hit her when she was in tunnels, in elevators and in other enclosed spaces, having started after a bumpy flight in a small plane in 2003, according to Page Six.

Tom Brady of the New England Patriots celebrates with wife Gisele Bundchen and daughter Vivian Brady after defeating the Atlanta Falcons during Super Bowl 51 in 2017. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images) 

“It felt like everything in my life was going to kill me,” Bündchen shared in her memoir, according to Page Six. “First it was the airplanes, then elevators. Then it was tunnels and hotels and modeling studios and cars. Now it was my own apartment.”

“Everything had become a cage, and I was the animal trapped inside, panting for air,” Bündchen wrote. “I couldn’t see a way out, and I couldn’t stand another day of feeling this way.”

Those feelings took her to a dark place — where she thought she might be better off dead.

“The idea swept over me then: Maybe it will be easier if I just jump. It will be all over. I can get out of this,” Bündchen wrote, according to Page Six.

“When I think back on that moment, and that 23-year-old girl, I want to cry. I want to tell her that everything will be all right, that she hasn’t even begun to live her life,” she wrote. “But in that moment, the only answer seemed to be to jump.”

The suicidal thoughts prompted Bündchen to get help. Doctors initially prescribed Xanax, but Bündchen said she knew that taking an anti-anxiety medication wasn’t a long-term solution. So she decided to make a life-style overhaul, according to People and Page Six.

She started by cutting out some bad habits — which included smoking and drinking too much wine and coffee.

“I had been smoking cigarettes, drinking a bottle of wine and three mocha frappuccinos every day, and I gave up everything in one day,” Bündchen revealed to People. “I thought, ‘If this stuff is in any way the cause of this pain in my life, it’s gotta go.'”

Bündchen also started to re-think her relationships, including with DiCaprio. During their six years together, the couple made People magazine’s Most Beautiful Couples list in 2004 and they often were in the tabloids.

But, as Vanity Fair reported in 2009, their relationship “was fraught with dramas that included an eight-month breakup, a reconciliation, and recurring reports of Gisele’s exasperation at Leo’s womanizing ways.”

According to People, Bündchen realized she was “alone” in her soul-searching, and decided it was time to move on. Bündchen and DiCaprio finally broke up in 2005.

“We were very young, and we grew together in a lot of ways,” she said in a 2009 interview with Vanity Fair. “We were just not meant to be boyfriend and girlfriend, but I respect him enormously, and I wish him nothing but the best.”

Bündchen soon began to date Brady in 2006. She told Vanity Fair she fell in love with him right away. They married in 2009 and had two children together, Benjamin, 8, and daughter Vivian, 5. Their family also includes Brady’s 11-year-old son, John, with his ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan.

“They are really flourishing to be the beautiful angels that they are,” Bündchen said about her children in her memoir.