For Sam Asghari, life is golden.
He plays the “baddest guy” in a new movie with John Travolta, “The Gentleman Thief,” and he’s head-over-heels in love with girlfriend Brooke Irvine.
But he also knows that, to many people, he will forever be known as “Mr. Britney Spears.”
Asked if he thinks there will ever come a time when people don’t ask him about the troubled superstar — whom he dated for six years and was married to for nearly two, until 2024 — he told Page Six: “Never going to happen.
“But am I fully ready to answer those questions and am I fully ready for it not to affect me? Absolutely.”
In contrast to Asghari’s settled new life, this year alone, Spears, 44, has been arrested for a DUI and gone to rehab.
Just days ago, the singer sparked safety concerns after standing and dancing through the sunroof of a Mercedes G-Wagon cruising down Los Angeles’ 101 Freeway. She later dismissed the backlash on Instagram, writing, “Nothing is what it seems.”
So what does Asghari make of this latest behavior from his ex-wife, who has so publicly struggled in the past?
The Iranian-born actor pauses before answering.
“I’ve been really focused on what has been happening in my country,” he said. “All my focus has gone towards that and the projects I’ve been doing. I don’t like to really look at entertainment news and I don’t like to believe what I see anyway.
Asghari recently said Spears is just as oppressed as the women in Iran.
The 32-year-old first met Spears in October 2016 on the set of her “Slumber Party” music video. He played her love interest, and they soon hit it off.
Asghari was by Spears’ side as she battled to be released from her strict 13-year conservatorship, and they wed in June 2022 at a rather bizarre star-studded wedding with guests including Madonna and Drew Barrymore. During those years, multiple sources told Page Six that Asghari was a solid force of support for her.
Even now, Asghari — who, Page Six previously reported, left the marriage without any spousal support — makes it clear that he wants the best for Spears.
“The past is the past, and we get to celebrate it, and we get to always reflect on it,” he said. “You can’t change the past. The things that happened happened. And like I said, I would never complain about one thing that changed my life for the better or for the worse.”
In the years since their divorce, finalized in December 2024, Asghari has moved on. He has been with Irvine, 32, for nearly two years and the pair live together in Los Angeles, along with their dog Porcha.
“She’s amazing,” he said of the real estate agent. “She’s super supportive, and we’ve been trying to enjoy the summer and try to go on vacation, and we’re trying to figure out with the schedule where to go.”
Might the two expand their family soon?
“I’m focused on my career now, but what I’ve learned is if I’m going to create a future in Hollywood, I’m going to have to put myself at risk and not my family and the people that are next to me …” Asghari said. “But, yeah, at some point, who doesn’t want to have a family? I mean, everybody wants to have a family.”
A former fitness trainer, Asghari has been working to build up a Hollywood career. Last year, he appeared on the NBC hit “The Traitors.” And now he has a role in “The Gentleman Thief,” out July 31, playing Victor, part of a team recruited by veteran con man Mason Goddard (Travolta) to steal a $100 million painting from a yacht.
“I’m the macho, the muscle of the operation,” Asghari said with a laugh. “Everybody has a specialty in the team, and I’m the guy that holds the big guns and goes on the big mission.
“I’m really the baddest guy in this movie.”
Asghari was brought on to the project through his old friend, Randall Emmett, who produced the movie, which also stars Rebecca de Mornay, Lukas Haas and DJ Khaled.
It’s a remarkable full-circle moment for Asghari, who, as a kid growing up in Tehran, watched Travolta’s films to help learn English. (His favorite: “The Taking of Pelham 123,” which came out in 2009, a couple of years after he moved to the US as a 12-year-old.)
“I never imagined that one day I’d be sharing the screen with him,” he said of Travolta. “Coming from Iran as a 12-year-old boy, it’s already winning the lottery — because the chances of coming to America from a country like that, it’s almost none.”
Now, he marveled, he’s “working with legends like Mel Gibson and John Travolta and John Cena and Jean Smart and Don Cheadle, Morgan Freeman and all these people that I would never had thought.
“I came from a country that has gone through so much politically … and there’s a lot of innocent people in Iran that have a lot of potential. And I always say if I was in Iran, I would never have accomplished anything better.”
Since a young Asghari joined his father, a tow-truck driver, in Los Angeles, he said, “I’ve always been working. The second I came to America, I was sweeping the floor of my cousin’s tow truck shop and then as a mechanic.
“The reason why I’m in entertainment right now is because my journey just took me this way. Whether I was an athlete or in entertainment or having a business, I would always be the same person … it doesn’t change me, working with John Travolta or sweeping my cousin’s floor.”
Even having been around Spears for as long as he was, he said, “I’m always surprised meeting people that have been in this industry for a long time, especially icons. The more successful someone that has been, the more known, the more iconic, the most charismatic the person is usually the hardest working person and the most humble person.”
With Travolta, “We talked about cigars, we talked about Iran, we talked about cars, we talked about airplanes.”
And how about Scientology, given that Travolta has famously been a member of the religion for decades? Did Travolta try to recruit him?
“Absolutely not!” he said. “I don’t even know what that is. So no. No, never. He was an absolute professional, just an amazing person, an amazing dad, amazing family man.
Up next, Asghari has made a short film called “The Good American,” which takes place in Iran and America, playing an Iranian refugee and ride-share driver living in Los Angeles. It will enter the festival circuit this fall.
“As an artist, I feel like it’s our responsibility is to not get involved politically, but to get involved emotionally and to get behind projects that truly mean something to you,” he said. “This was a Hollywood production showing what really goes down in Iran and how the immigrants react when they come to this country.”
The conflicts tearing his homeland apart for the past few months “haven’t made me feel good at all,” he continues, “I mean, who likes to watch their country taken hostage by their own government and doing all these horrible things and getting them involved in a war that they can’t defend themselves” It doesn’t feel good at all, but it gives me motivation to be able to continue to be able to represent and to be able to do things for my people.”
He sees himself, he said, as a rose growing up through concrete.
“The concrete was the country I came from — and the rose is me growing in unknown circumstances.”
