Ever since news broke this month that Sam Asghari, Britney Spears’ husband of 14 months, was filing for divorce, we’ve eagerly waited to see what moves the two former spouses will make next (other than hiring top divorce attorneys and possibly buying a horse).
Spears, for her part, may be getting back into music: She and Will.i.am dropped an electro-pop banger, “Mind Your Business,” this summer, marking Spears’ second single since being released from her 13-year conservatorship in 2021.
Her ex, meanwhile, is reportedly focused on beefing up his IMDb page. TMZ reported on Monday that Asghari, a member of SAG-AFTRA, is looking to snap up more acting gigs as soon as the ongoing actors strike ends, and he’s also interested in getting into professional hosting. (The Daily Beast has reached out to Asghari’s representatives for comment.)
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But does the 29-year-old have the chops to make it in Hollywood without his much more famous ex-wife by his side? Let’s take a closer look at his résumé and decide.
A peek at Asghari’s filmography tells us that the handsome Iranian-American fitness trainer has had a few semi-high-profile assignments in the past, beginning with a pair of music video creds. His first credit on IMDb is for Fifth Harmony’s “Work from Home,” in which he played a sexy, oiled-up construction worker who alluringly dumps a bag of cement into a cement mixer in the first frames of the iconic 2016 video.
He was also in Spears’ “Slumber Party” with Tinashe, so more “hot-guy-in-a-music-video” work seems like a steady path forward if Asghari wants to continue pursuing eye-candy gigs.
On the TV side, Asghari made a guest appearance on a 2019 episode of NCIS, in which he played a security guard, and also popped up in an episode of the hit HBO comedy Hacks in a role called “Sexy Santa.” Most recently, he guested on two episodes of Prime Video’s Special Ops: Lioness, which holds a 55 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes; The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager called it a “military thriller minus any thrills, originality, or nuance.” Recapping Asghari’s role, USA Today wrote that he “shows more muscles than lines of dialogue” during his time on screen.
His movie work, meanwhile, doesn’t tell us much either; he played Sargeant Tobias in the 2022 Mel Gibson film Hot Seat and appeared as himself in a 2020 Snoop Dogg vehicle called Unbelievable!!!!! (the reviews aren’t great).
Asghari at least seems to be self-aware about the fact that his looks might prevent people from seeing him as a “serious” actor. In a 2021 interview about his recurring role in three episodes of the Showtime dark comedy Black Monday, Asghari told Variety, “Everybody that looks like a model or a good-looking person is usually not a good actor. That’s just the perception. But the truth is, I’ve been acting since back in high school — I was doing theater and arts. I was doing Shakespeare, you know, ‘Macbeth,’ ‘Hamlet.’ And right now, I’m getting the opportunity to finally do it as a profession, rather than a hobby.”
Also in 2021, Asghari was on the receiving end of a certain amount of mean-spirited backlash when The Sun reported that he was on the hunt for a role in a Marvel franchise movie. “Well, he should take acting classes,” one person responded.
But Asghari may not be hopeless.
“Despite their lack of screen time, [Shannen] Doherty and Asghari also add complexity and suspense to the story,” a 2022 review of Hot Seat in The National News reads. “Asghari, 28, Britney Spears’s husband who was born in Tehran, Iran, and has been building up a fine CV over the last few years, especially makes his mark, which is even more impressive when you consider he’s actually only in a few scenes.”
With both the SAG-AFTRA strike and his impending high-profile divorce remaining unresolved, Asghari’s screen career certainly remains up in the air. Then again, his one upcoming credit on IMDb is for the Paul Feig-directed movie Grand Death Lotto, starring legit movie stars John Cena and Simu Liu, so maybe his profile is growing after all. At the very least, he can pick Liu’s brain about how to score that Marvel gig.
