Moby apologises to Natalie Portman after claiming they dated

Moby has publicly apologised to Natalie Portman days after she claimed he had been “creepy” with her when she was younger.

The dance musician, 53, alleged he dated the Hollywood actress when she was 20 in his memoir Then It Fell Apart.

Portman remembered their relationship differently, telling Harper’s Bazaar UK that “there are many factual errors and inventions” in his writing.

The 37-year-old actress told the magazine: “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. He said I was 20; I definitely wasn’t. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18.”

Moby initially fired back saying that he was “confused” at her denial over a relationship with him, insisting that they did date.

But he has since issued an apology on Instagram saying that all criticisms of him in recent days are “very valid”.

Moby also said that he should have “acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago” given their “almost 14 year age difference”.

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. Thanks, Moby Ps I completely respect Natalie’s possible regret in dating me(to be fair, I would probably regret dating me, too), but it doesn’t alter the actual facts of our brief romantic history

A post shared by moby xⓋx (@moby) on May 22, 2019 at 3:23am PDT

He wrote earlier in the post: “I also fully recognize (sic) 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.

“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.”

The post continues: “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.

“So for that I apologize, to Natalie, as well as the other people I wrote about in Then It Fell Apart without telling them beforehand.”