Moby Apologizes To Natalie Portman Over His Claim They Dated

Moby has apologized for claiming in his recently published memoir that he dated Natalie Portman.

“As some time has passed I’ve realized that many of the criticisms leveled at me regarding my inclusion of Natalie in ‘Then It Fell Apart’ are very valid,” the 53-year-old musician wrote on Instagram Saturday in a lengthy post titled “from moby, an apology.”

He added: “I also fully recognize that it was truly inconsiderate of me to not let her know about her inclusion in the book beforehand, and equally inconsiderate for me to not fully respect her reaction.”

In his book “Then It Fell Apart,” Moby said he met Portman at one of his concerts when he was 33 and she was 20. He claimed the actress flirted with him in his dressing room and a relationship later blossomed.

“For a few weeks I had tried to be Natalie’s boyfriend, but it hadn’t worked out,” Moby wrote in the book released earlier this month. “I thought that I was going to have to tell her that my panic was too egregious for me to be in a real relationship, but one night on the phone she informed me that she’d met somebody else. I was relieved that I’d never have to tell her how damaged I was.”

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Portman, however, saw things differently. The Oscar-winning actress said she was only 18 at the time she met Moby and described their encounter as “creepy.”

“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,” she said in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar that was published Thursday.

Moby pushed back at Portman’s denial and posted a shirtless photo of himself with his arm around her as proof. Days later, he backed down posted an apology.