June 17, 2022
Singer Britney Spears has married longtime boyfriend, Iranian-born muscleman Sam Asghari, but the wedding festivities were overshadowed when Spears first husband tried to crash the ceremonies.
Jason Alexander, 40, was charged with felony stalking plus a string of misdemeanor offenses trespassing, vandalism and battery. He pleaded not guilty. A judge set his bail at $100,000 and issued a restraining order requiring him to stay at least 100 yards away from Spears for three years.
Alexander, a childhood friend of Spears, was Spears’ first husband. The two were married for less than three days in 2004 before an annulment.
Spears, 40, and Asghari, 28, were married June 9 at her home in Thousand Oaks, California, in front of several dozen guests including Selena Gomez, Drew Barrymore, Paris Hilton and Madonna.
Spears was previously married from 2004 to 2007 to Kevin Federline, with whom she shares two sons, ages 14 and 15. She met Asghari in 2016 on the set of the video for her song “Slumber Party.”
Their wedding came nine months after Spears and Asghari announced they were engaged, and nearly seven months after Spears won her freedom from a court conservatorship that controlled her life and affairs for more than 12 years.
Spears posted about the nuptials on her Instagram and Twitter accounts the following day. “Wow !!! Holy holy crap !!! WE DID IT !!! WE GOT MARRIED !!! Gggggeeeeezzzzz !!! It was the most spectacular day !!!” Spears said in the posts. “The ceremony was a dream and the party was even better !!!” At 12 years old, Asghari emigrated to Los Angeles in 2006 and settled down with his father, mother and three sisters a move that wasn’t easy, he explained to Men’s Health in 2018.
“I had to leave my friends and family who I was very close with, and I knew I was moving away and never coming back,” he said. Although his father moved back to Tehran in 2009, Asghari is appreciative of the opportunity to live in the United States. “When people complain nowadays about what’s happening in the US and the imperfections of the country, I never understand because I come from a country where there was no freedom whatsoever,” he told GQ in June 2022.
Asghari became a US citizen in 2012. He didn’t know how to speak English upon his arrival to the country. He took ESL classes at his school, but credits watching Hannah Montana on Disney for helping him learn the language.
Asghari was committed to picking up American culture. “I had one friend that spoke Farsi, but we never spoke Farsi to each other. We were very committed to fitting in, and we did many, many, many things to fit in,” he told GQ. “We used to drink Gatorade every single morning off the vending machine, because we thought it was an American thing to do.”
Asghari runs Asghari Fitness, which offers members personalized training programs and personalized seven-day meal plans for $9 dollars a week. Asghari parlayed his fit physique into a second career in modeling and has his sister to thank for helping him step outside of his comfort zone, and onto the runway.
“I was a very masculine guy I played football and was in the police academy,” Asghari told Men’s Health. “At the time, my Sunday best was basketball shorts. My sister said, ‘I will take you to this audition, just come with me’.”
Following his first runway show at 21 years old, Asghari’s resume began to grow. In addition to modeling, he began to be cast in television, music and film projects. Asghari got his big break when he was cast as Spears’ love interest in her 2016 music video for “Slumber Party.” “I was like, ‘He was really cute, this guy was really cute,’ so I called him,” Spears recalled in a 2017 radio interview about finding his phone number in her bag a few months after the shoot.
“He’s just a really fun, funny person.” While he’s held bit parts in several shows such as NCIS, The Family Business, Hacks, and Black Monday Asghari wants to pursue acting more seriously, taking on bigger roles.
Most recently, he was cast in the action-thriller Hot Seat opposite Mel Gibson, marking Asghari’s first major film role. “Action is something that I want to do action, drama, thriller that’s a genre that I want to really get into,” he told Variety in May 2021.