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But according to Portman, 37, the musician’s recollection of their time together was far from accurate, as she saw him not as a romantic partner, but as a “creepy” older man who tried to overstep his bounds.
“I was surprised to hear that he characterized 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,” Portman toldHarper’s Bazaar UKonline.
“I was a fan and went to one of his shows when I had just graduated,” she told the outlet. “When we met after the show, he said, ‘Let’s be friends.’ He was on tour and I was working shooting a film, so we only hung out a handful of times before I realized that this was an older man who was interested in me in a way that felt inappropriate.”
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Portman also slammed him and his publisher, Faber and Faber, for not paying closer attention to the details in sharing the story.
“There was no fact checking from him or his publisher — it almost feels deliberate,” she said. “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.”
“I recently read a gossip piece wherein Natalie Portman said that we’d never dated. 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 bookThen It Fell Apartis accurate, with lots of corroborating photo evidence, etc.
PS 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.”
Then It Fell Apartwas released earlier this month, and his anecdote on Portman was excerpted in April inThe Times.
The ”Porcelain” musician said he ended up attending the VMAs with Portman, but that eventually, she ended their relationship, beating him to the punch.
“For a few weeks I had tried to be Natalie’s boyfriend, but it hadn’t worked out,” he wrote, according to the excerpt. “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.”
“You can’t date Luke Skywalker’s mom and not have them hate your guys,” he said, referring to Portman’s role in theStar Warsuniverse as Padmé Amidala.
source: people.com
