Natalie Portman calls Moby 'disturbing,' 'creepy' over claims they dated when she was a teenager
Natalie Portman is baffled by musician Moby's claim that the two dated when she was in college, calling his account "disturbing" — but he's holding firm, calling the story "actual facts".
"My recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school," Portman, 37, told Harpers Bazaar of Moby, 53. "That he used this story to sell his book was very disturbing to me."
Moby details the alleged relationship in his new memoir, saying Portman was 20 and he was 33 when they had some sort of relationship that unfolded Harvard, where she went to college. (If the maths don't seem to add up, it's because Portman had to have been a teenager when Moby was 33.) "At midnight she brought me to her dorm room and we lay down next to each other on her small bed," he recalls. "After she fell asleep I carefully extracted myself from her arms and took a taxi back to my hotel."
Portman, on the other hand, says she was a fan who went to one of his concerts after her high school graduation. "We only hung out a handful of times before I realised that this was an older man who was interested in me in a way that felt inappropriate," she said. "He said I was 20; I definitely wasn't. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18."
In response to Portman's denial, Moby penned a lengthy note on Instagram, calling the Harpers Bazaar story a "gossip piece" and saying he was "confused" by Portman's characterisation. "We did, in fact, date ... 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."
Moby then said he has "lots of corroborating photo evidence," adding, "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."
Portman, however, told the magazine simply, "There was no fact checking from him or his publisher [Faber & Faber] — 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."
