Actress Natalie Portman has denied claims from US producer Moby that the two dated in the late-1990s/early-2000s.
Portman has told Harper's Bazaar that she was "surprised" to hear the claims in Moby's forthcoming autobiography, Then It Fell Apart, which details several encounters between the pair including him visiting her while she attended Harvard University.
“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,” she told the magazine.
“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.”
Portman went on to say that she "realised that this was an older man who was interested in me in a way that felt inappropriate".
Moby has since refuted Portman's statement, sharing a photo of the pair on Instagram accompanied by a statement saying he "can’t figure out why she would actively misrepresent the truth".
"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," the post reads.
"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."
The book also details an alleged relationship with singer Lana Del Rey (real name Lizzie Grant), claiming they had dated prior to Grant's success with her Lana Del Rey work.
“We’d kissed at the bar at 4 a.m., just as the place was closing, and I’d asked her to come home with me," details a snippet on the book shown on NME. "She’d smiled and said no, she wouldn’t go home with me after just meeting me, but she would happily go on a date if I called her and asked her out."
Portman has not issued a response to Moby's additional claims, and Del Rey is yet to respond. Then It Fell Apart is due for release later this year.
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