Her first job ever — picking cherries at age 12, on a farm in Ontario — got her $10 a day.
Her first modeling job — for a hometown newspaper ad — paid just $8 an hour.
Supermodel Linda Evangelista took the witness stand this afternoon in her contentious court battle with billionaire French baby daddy Francois-Henri Pinault, describing her cash-strapped beginnings as a prelude to the big-money child support pitch she’ll make when her testimony continues Monday.
“Fifty-cents a basket,” Evangelista said, when asked what the pay was for that first job some 35 years ago.
This, from a woman who once famously announced that supermodels don’t even get out of bed for less than $10,000.
“Twenty baskets — it took the entire day,” Evangelista remembered in her wispy, almost adolescent voice. “They made me pick from the ground. They wouldn’t let me go up the ladder.”
These days, Evangelista continues to command $100,000 for the occasional runway appearance, the still-glamorous catwalker testified.
She also spends more than $46,000 per month, she says, on little Augustin, her 5-year-old son by Pinault, the CEO of the Paris-based luxury conglomerate that owns Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.
Pinault would meet, impregnate and marry actress Salma Hayek within a year of fathering “Augie” — and has been less than a model dad, Evangelista’s lawyer has contended in demanding the Frenchman pay all or most of the boy’s expenses.
The model and the mogul had been together on only seven days over the course of four months, until January of 2006, when Evangelista announced her pregnancy. Pinault promptly suggested she abort the baby, she says — though Pinault himself denies that.
He promptly dumped her, not conceding paternity until it was confirmed by a DNA test a full year after Augie’s birth.
“My wife was pregnant,” Pinault explained of his decision to put baby Augie on a shelf that first year.
“For five months we were told the baby was Down Syndrome,” he said of Valentina, his daughter by Hayek. “I ask Linda to postpone my recognition (of Augie) until after the birth of Valentina,” he said.
“It was very complicated situation,” Pinault testified. “My wife almost lost the baby.”
Pinault — who is worth some $3 billion, and earns up to $5 million a year — has paid not as single euro until last year, when a Manhattan magistrate set a temporary support amount, according to testimony.
Pinault’s lawyers, in turn, are accusing the supermodel of cherry-picking facts.
The French businessman testified today that his lawyers had repeatedly broached the topic of support with Evangelista’s lawyers — the result being deafening silence.
He spent $260,000 on “gifts” in 2010, Pinault told Support Magistrate Paul Ryneski matter-of-factly, under questioning by Evangelista lawyer William Beslow.
“How much of that, if any, of that was for gifts for Augie?” Beslow asked.
Pinault said he didn’t know. But he readily admitted that most of that money was for gifts for himself.
“I have a watch collection,” he said. “It’s for when I buy a watch for me,” he said.
Did he recall buying any gifts at all for Augie in 2010, he was asked.
“I bought him a present for his birthday and for Christmas,” the Frenchman answered.
Augie would have turned four in October of that year. What was the birthday present? Beslow asked.
“I don’t remember,” Pinault answered.
And what was the Christmas present?
“It was — FAO Schwartz,” he fumbled. “I bought it online. It was a piano thing.”
Evangelista’s testimony continues Monday.