Moby has taken to social media to pen an apology to Natalie Portman following claims he made in his new book that the pair once dated.
Last week an excerpt from Moby’s new book, Then It Fell Apart, heard the musician recount taking Natalie Portman for a drink and, later, kissing her while visiting her at Harvard. Portman has since refuted claims that she was involved in a romantic relationship with the star, saying she found it “disturbing” that false stories were being used to promote the book.
Portman said in a statement: “I was surprised to hear that he characterised the very short time that I knew him as dating because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school.”
Moby then responded to the actor’s comments, saying: ““I recently read a gossip piece wherein Natalie Portman said that we’d never dated. This confused me, as we did, in fact, date. And after briefly dating in 1999 we remained friends for years.
“I like Natalie, and I respect her intelligence and activism. But, to be honest, I can’t figure out why she would actively misrepresent the truth about our (albeit brief) involvement. The story as laid out in my book Then It Fell Apart is accurate, with lots of corroborating photo evidence, etc.”
After days of criticism and reflection, Moby has now apologised “to Natalie, as well as the other people I wrote about in Then It Fell Apart without telling them beforehand.”
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“I tried to treat everyone I included in Then It Fell Apart with dignity and respect, but nonetheless it was truly inconsiderate for me to not let them know before the book was released,” Moby said in his Instagram post, which accompanied an image featuring the words “from moby, an apology” over a plain white backdrop.
“I have a lot of admiration for Natalie, for her intelligence, creativity, and animal rights activism, and I hate that I might have caused her and her family distress,” Moby said of the actor.
He added: “Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should’ve acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago.”
See Moby’s post below:
Elsewhere in Then It Fell Apart, Moby writes about other acquaintances, including claims that he dated Lizzy Grant aka a pre-fame Lana Del Rey.
“She was beautiful, smart, and charming; making plans to meet up with her was both what I wanted to do and what my new therapist had told me to do,” he wrote.
The same book also saw him claiming that he once rubbed his penis on Donald Trump at a New York party.