Moby is adamant that he dated Natalie Portman

In Moby's new book, Then it Fell Apart, the "Porcelain" singer writes, "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. I was 33 and she was 20 but this was her world."

He then goes on to write that he "tried to be Natalie’s boyfriend" for a short period of time but it didn't work out.

Yesterday (21 May), Natalie Portman responded to the passage in Moby's book. Speaking to Harper's Bazaar, Portman said, "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."

Portman added, "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."

In a new Instagram post, Moby confronted the denial, "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."

View this post on Instagram

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 xx (@moby) on May 22, 2019 at 3:23am PDT

Stereogum reports that in the same memoir, Moby also recalls kissing pre-fame Lana Del Rey when she was Lizzy Grant.