Moby is confused by Natalie Portman's claims that they didn't date

Moby has hit back at Natalie Portman, after she denied that they dated, called him 'creepy' and branded his behaviour 'inappropriate'.

In his new memoir Then It Fell Apart, the musician claims that he and the Star Wars actress had seen each other for a time in the late 90s.

“I was a bald binge drinker and Natalie Portman was a beautiful movie star,” he wrote.

Read more: Natalie Portman brands Moby ‘creepy’ after dating claims

“But here she was in my dressing room, flirting with me. I was 33 and she was 20 but this was her world.”

Portman was asked about the alleged relationship that Moby said ensued, adding that she had a rather different recollection.

“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 told Harper's Bazaar.

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

Read more: Natalie Portman was ‘bummed out’ by Star Wars reception

Moby has now expressed confusion over Portman's comments, in a post to Instagram, in which he appears in a picture topless with the actress.

“I recently read a gossip piece wherein Natalie Portman said that we’d never dated,” he writes.

“This confused me, as we did, in fact, date. And after briefly dating in 1999 we remained friends for years. I like Natalie, and I respect her intelligence and activism. But, to be honest, I can’t figure out why she would actively misrepresent the truth about our(albeit brief)involvement.

“The story as laid out in my book Then It Fell Apart is accurate, with lots of corroborating photo evidence, etc. P.S. I completely respect Natalie’s possible regret in dating me (to be fair, I would probably regret dating me, too), but it doesn’t alter the actual facts of our brief romantic history.”

Portman had just starred in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace as Padmé Amidala in 1999.