IT’S A MOBY TRICK TO PLUG HIS BOOK...

NATALIE DENIES SHE DATED DJ, CALLING HIM ‘CREEPY’

A ATALIE PORTMAN has issued a withering response to Moby’s boast t that they dated when she w was 13 years his junior.

Oscar-winner Natalie says although he claimed she was 20 at the time, she was more like 18, branding the American DJ old and ‘creepy’.

She painted a different version of events after Moby bragged in his autobiography Then It Fell Apart that she ‘flirted’ with him during a meet-and-greet at one of his 2001 shows, when he was in his 30s.

She was fresh from her Star Wars debut in The Phantom Menace. The now-married mum-of-two says: ‘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 continued to Harper’s Bazaar online: ‘He said I was 20; I definitely wasn’t. I had just turned 18. There was no fact-checking from him or his publisher. 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.’

The Black Swan star added: ‘I was a fan and went to one of his shows when I had just graduated.

‘When we met after the show, he said, “Let’s be friends”. He was on tour and I was 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 said he was suffering panic attacks at the time, insisting in his tell-all tale: ‘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.

‘For a few weeks I had tried to be Natalie’s boyfriend, but it hadn’t worked out. I was relieved I’d never have to tell her how damaged I was.’