Moby has cancelled all upcoming public appearances following a furore over “disturbing” claims made in his autobiography that he had briefly dated Natalie Portman, which she had denied.
A message on his website read: “Moby is cancelling all upcoming public appearances for the foreseeable future. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
“All tickets will be refunded at the point of purchase, and Moby is happy to provide signed bookplates to everyone who bought tickets to these events.”
On Tuesday, Moby wrote on Instagram he was “going away for a while” and apologised.
The singer, 53, claimed to have had a brief relationship in 2001 with the actress, 37, in his autobiography When It Fell Apart, released last month, after the pair met backstage at one of his shows.
But, Portman shut the claims down, saying her recollection is that Moby was “a much older man being creepy with me”.
Moby, whose real name is Richard Melville Hall, responded on Instagram saying he had been left “confused” by Portman’s claims they did not date and accusing her of “actively misrepresenting the truth.”
“This confused me, as we did, in fact, date. And after briefly dating in 1999 we remained friends for years,” he wrote.
In his book, Moby described one of their meetings: “I was a bald binge drinker and Natalie Portman was a beautiful movie star,” he wrote.
“But here she was in my dressing room, flirting with me. I was 33 and she was 20 but this was her world.”
He added that he then “tried to be Natalie’s boyfriend” but things “hadn’t worked out,” and claimed that he was relieved when she eventually broke things off.
But, speaking to Harper’s Bazaar UK after the book’s release, Portman denied a romantic involvement with the singer and said that she was actually 18 when she met him.
“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 had just graduated high school,” she told the publication.
She described Moby’s account as “very disturbing” and filled with “factual errors and inventions,” adding: “I would have liked him or his publisher to reach out to fact check.”
“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,” she continued.
On Tuesday, Moby captioned an Instagram post of the words “last post” on a white background, saying: “I’m going to go away for awhile.
“But before I do I want to apologize again, and to say clearly that all of this has been my own fault.
“I am the one who released the book without showing it to the people I wrote about. I’m the one who posted defensively and arrogantly. I’m the one who behaved inconsiderately and disrespectfully, both in 2019 and in 1999.
“There is obviously no one else to blame but me.
“Thank you, and I’m sorry.”
