Natalie Portman criticises Moby over ‘disturbing’ account of friendship

Natalie Portman has described the musician Moby as a “creepy man” – and denied his account of their friendship as detailed in his new memoir Then It Fell Apart.

In the book, Moby alleges the two dated while he was 33 and she was 20, after she met him backstage and “flirted” with him following a concert in Austin, Texas.

“I was a bald binge drinker and Natalie Portman was a beautiful movie star. But here she was in my dressing room, flirting with me,” he writes in the book.

Moby then asserts he “tried to be her boyfriend” but experienced anxiety at the prospect of being entangled in a romantic relationship with Portman.

“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,” he writes.

Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar ahead of her new documentary on factory farming, Portman confirmed she met Moby backstage but refuted claims they dated.

“I was a fan and went to one of his shows when I had just graduated,” she said. “When we met after the show, he said, ‘let’s be friends.’”

“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 said.

“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.”

“He was on tour and I was working, shooting a film, so 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 added.

Jewish News has contacted a representative of Moby for comment.