Natalie Portman, 37, DENIES that she ever dated Moby, 53

Natalie Portman has rejected Moby’s claims that the pair once dated, saying he was just an ‘older man being creepy’.

The electronic musician wrote in his autobiography that he went out with the actress for ‘a few weeks’ when she was 20.

Moby, now 53, whose real name is Richard Melville Hall, claimed that Miss Portman flirted with him backstage at one of his concerts.

‘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,’ he said. ‘I was 33 and she was 20 but this was her world.’

Writing about their alleged relationship in his new book When it Fell Apart, he added: ‘For a few weeks I had tried to be Natalie’s boyfriend, but it hadn’t worked out.

‘I thought that I was going to have to tell her that my panic was too egregious for me to be in a real relationship, but one night on the phone she informed me that she’d met somebody else. I was relieved that I’d never have to tell her how damaged I was.’

Now Miss Portman has hit back at the claims, saying the pair did not date and that Moby - a vegan musician whose records include the 1999 album Play, which spawned eight hit singles - was an ‘inappropriate’ older man.

The actress, 37, told Harper’s Bazaar: ‘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.

‘He said I was 20. I definitely wasn’t. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18.’

The mother-of-two also criticised the Moby’s publisher for not checking the facts of the story, saying she thought it was a ‘deliberate’ attempt to sell books.