Moby divulges all kinds of juicy anecdotes about Hollywood in Then It Fell Apart, his memoir about his struggles with addiction during the pinnacle of his music industry success in the 2000s.
'A Much Older Man Being Creepy': Natalie Portman Disputes Moby's Memoir
Actress Natalie Portman who stars as Queen Amidala in the new Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace arrives for the Royal Premier of the eagerly awaited film at the Odeon in London's Leicester Square 14 July 1999. ( SINEAD LYNCH/AFP/Getty Images)
Now, Natalie Portman is disputing how he characterized their relationship in 1999. In the book, Moby describes a sweet, short fling when he was 33 and she was 20, recalling how the two met backstage at one of his shows and later hung out together at the VMAs and in Portman’s Harvard dorm room.
While Moby describes his elation that a beautiful movie star was interested in him, Portman told Harper’s Bazaar that she thought she and Moby were just friends, and stopped seeing him once she realized he was interested in her in a way she considered inappropriate. Additionally, Portman, who was born in 1981, pointed out that she was 18 in 1999, not 20.
“I was surprised to hear that he characterized 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,” Portman told Harper’s Bazaar. “He said I was 20; I definitely wasn’t. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18. There was no fact checking from him or his publisher—it almost feels deliberate. That he used this story to sell his book was very disturbing to me. It wasn’t the case. There are many factual errors and inventions. I would have liked him or his publisher to reach out to fact check.”
Moby disputed Portman’s account on Instagram, posting a photo of the two together.
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“I recently read a gossip piece wherein Natalie Portman said that we’d never dated,” he wrote. “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.”
“I completely respect Natalie’s possible regret in dating me,” Moby added.
