Moby has penned a public apology to Natalie Portman after she took offense to and contested comments he made about allegedly dating her.
In his memoir Then It Fell Apart, the 53-year-old musician wrote that he met the Oscar-winning actress in 1999 when she was 20—in reality, she was 18. He said he kissed her during a night out in New York City. Portman, 37, contested his account, telling Harper’s Bazaar U.K., saying, “My recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school.” Moby insisted on Instagram twice that he did date Portman and also said her fans have sent him “anonymous threats of violence.”
On Saturday, he wrote on Instagram, “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. 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.”
“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,” he said. “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.”
Portman has not responded to Moby’s latest comments.