Gisele Bündchen calls her divorce from Tom Brady 'the death of my dream' and said it was 'heartbreaking' their marriage didn't work out

• Gisele Bündchen said her divorce from Tom Brady was "the death of my dream."
• She called the split "heartbreaking" and likened it to "death and a rebirth."

Gisele Bündchen called her recent divorce from NFL superstar Tom Brady "the death of my dream."

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Bündchen opened up about the high-profile split and likened the loss of a partner through divorce to "death and a rebirth."

"It's tough because you imagine your life was going to be a certain way, and you did everything you could, you know?" Bündchen said.

The once-seemingly-perfect couple officially split last October, following Brady's first retirement, then un-retirement from the NFL in February 2022.

Brady returned to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for one final season before being knocked out in the wild-card round of the NFC playoffs by the Dallas Cowboys. He announced his official retirement from football last month.

When news of their divorce broke, rumors swirled that Bündchen gave her partner an ultimatum: Football or family, but she calls those assertions "the craziest thing I've ever heard."

She told Vanity Fair that their divorce didn't happen overnight — "That takes years to happen," she said, adding that "What's been said is one piece of a much bigger puzzle."

Bündchen also dispelled rumors that the MAGA hat spotted in Brady's locker in 2015 drove a wedge in their marriage, Vanity Fair reported.

"You give everything you got to achieve your dream," Bündchen told Vanity Fair of their split. "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."

For now, Bündchen is focusing on herself and her kids while bouncing between homes in Costa Rica and Miami. She insisted that she will "continue" cheering for Brady "forever."

"If there's one person I want to be the happiest in the world, it's him, believe me," she said. "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."