Why Natalie Portman called Moby a creep: “Very disturbing to me”
Is it possible to separate art from an artist, no matter their reputation?
It seems to be the case for some, Woody Allen or Michael Jackson, for example, not entirely. Obviously, Gregg Wallace doesn’t count; he’s a greengrocer. But according to actor Natalie Portman, one music star, albeit one you don’t see as much these days, has gotten away with it to some degree.
Now, I don’t know Moby; he might be sound, who knows, and he undoubtedly made some pretty toe-tapping dance tunes in the late 1990s, mostly built on traditional blues and gospel songs from the deep south of America. He was famously a vegan and banged on about that quite a lot. But it is fair to say Natalie Portman is not a fan at all.
Moby wrote a biography back in 2019 called Porcelain, which told the story of his Christian upbringing, drug use and (again) veganism, and then followed it up with another, called Then it Fell Apart three years later, in which he claimed that he and Portman dated when he was 33 and the actor was 20. He wrote passages about going to see her at Harvard University and included details about the “relationship” and how he recalled “kissing under the centuries-old oak trees”.
Adding, “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.”
OK then. The problem was that Portman absolutely did not qualify whatever went on as a relationship and was pretty furious when she read the book, saying, “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.”
According to in-depth research, achieved by typing “how old is Moby” into Google, the year in question would have been 1999, which would indeed have made the musician 33. Portman, however, is a different story.
She told Bazaar, “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… 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.”
Moby’s reply to the situation, which is his right, was to double down on a social media post, saying that they were indeed in a relationship. But after more backlash, thanks to his putting up photos of the two of them, which didn’t really conclusively show anything at all, he apologised and said, “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 went on to finish her studies until she left Harvard in 2003 and began a film career that had started when she appeared in Star Wars as a teen and reached new heights with Black Swan in 2010, the twisting Darren Aronofsky thriller. She also underlined her standing in Hollywood with three Thor movies for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Moby, meanwhile, undertook a 25th anniversary tour for Play last year, which sold out a lot of venues around Europe. He donated the proceeds to local animal rights organisations.
