The supermodel was discovered at 14 and made her major breakthrough at 16 in a Corinne Day shoot for The Face, but she admits her meteoric rise to the top of the modelling world had a negative effect on her health.
Kate was left bedridden with anxiety after completing the famous 1992 Calvin Klein campaign which featured her topless and straddling Mark Wahlberg - then known as Marky Mark - and made her a global star.
In a revealing interview with Vanity Fair magazine, she said: "I had a nervous breakdown when I was 17 or 18, when I had to go and work with Marky Mark and Herb Ritts. It didn`t feel like me at all. I felt really bad straddling this buff guy. I didn`t like it.
"I couldn`t get out of bed for two weeks. I thought I was going to die. I went to the doctor and he said, `I`ll give you some Valium,` and Francesca Sorrenti [Kate`s friend], thank God, said, `You`re not taking that.`
"It was just anxiety. Nobody takes care of you mentally. There`s a massive pressure to do what you have to do.
"It was just really weird - a stretch limo coming to pick you up from work. I didn`t like it. But it was work and I had to do it."
Kate also opened up about her relationship with ex-fiance Johnny Depp - who she was with from 1994 to 1998 - and admits she was devastated when the romance ended because she relied on the actor so much.
She explained: "There`s nobody that`s ever really been able to take care of me. Johnny did for a bit. I believed what he said. Like if I said, `What do I do?` - he`d tell me. And that`s what I missed when I left. I really lost that gauge of somebody I could trust.
"Nightmare. Years and years of crying. Oh, the tears..."
Kate - who is now married to The Kills musician Jamie Hince and has a nine-year-old daughter Lila Grace from a previous relationship - still relies on a piece of advice the Hollywood heartthrob gave her to deal with pressures of fame.
She said: "I was lucky to be with Johnny ... he taught me a lot about fame. He told me, `never complain, never explain`. That`s why I don`t use twitter and things like that. I don`t want people to know what is true all the time and that`s what keeps the mystery."
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