The singer came under fire after Portman refuted his claims that they dated back when she was 18 years old.
After a week of backlash over claims in his new memoir, Moby has issued a public apology to Natalie Portman.
The singer took to his Instagram page to pen a lengthy caption to a post that read simply, "from moby, an apology."
"As some time has passed I've realized that many of the criticisms leveled at me regarding my inclusion of Natalie in Then It Fell Apart are very valid," he wrote. "I also fully recognize 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 53-year-old singer continued. "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. Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should've acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago."
In his book, Moby claims that Portman flirted with him in his dressing room in 1999, and afterward, he said they met up at the MTV Video Music Awards and then at a Donatella Versace party together where he performed. In a later chapter of his book, Moby alleges having an "amazing night" in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her, while she was attending Harvard.
"We held hands and wandered around Harvard, kissing under the centuries-old oak trees. At midnight she brought me to her dorm room and we lay down next to each other on her small bed. After she fell asleep I carefully extracted myself from her arms and took a taxi back to my hotel," he claims, later writing that "for a few weeks I had tried to be Natalie's boyfriend, but it hadn't worked out... I was relieved that I'd never have to tell her how damaged I was."
However, during an interview published last week in Harper's Bazaar UK, Portman said the pair never dated and clarified their 16-year age difference.
"I was surprised to hear that he characterized 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. 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."
"I was a fan and went to one of his shows when I had just graduated," she recalled. "When we met after the show, he said, 'Let's be friends.' He was on tour and I was working, shooting a film, so we only hung out a handful of times before I realized that this was an older man who was interested in me in a way that felt inappropriate."
Portman, who has been extremely private about her personal life throughout the years, married dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied in 2012, after meeting in 2009 on the set of Black Swan. They share two children, son Aleph and daughter Amalia.
See more on the actress in the video below.
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