James Van Der Beek was TV’s original teen dreamer.
The actor died at 48 after a battle with colorectal cancer on Wednesday. His widow, Kimberly Van Der Beek, announced the news via a joint Instagram statement, writing, “He met his final days with courage, faith and grace.”
His biggest legacy was his role on “Dawson’s Creek,” which followed him into his final years.
In a 2014 interview with National Geographic, Van Der Beek, who was born in Connecticut and spent his later years in Texas with his wife and six kids, recalled how he began the ‘90s backpacking through Europe when he was 19.
“I didn’t have enough money to stay in Paris for more than a day,” he explained.
By the decade’s end, “I was in Paris promoting a television show, and couldn’t walk down the street [there] without a hat on, because I was getting mobbed.”
The seminal teen drama was created by Kevin Williamson and aired for six seasons on the WB from 1998 to 2003. Set in the fictional town of Capeside, Mass., the cult classic followed sensitive aspiring filmmaker Dawson Leery (Van Der Beek) and his friends, including Joey (Katie Holmes), Pacey (Joshua Jackson), and Jen (Michelle Williams).
“We were making this little bitty show for this little-bitty network, and we had no idea that it would explode the way it did,” Williamson told The Post in June. “That cast was terrific. It’s hard to stumble upon a cast like that.”
The show averaged around 7 million weekly viewers, and it was a starmaker, launching Van Der Beek along with Jackson, Williams, Holmes, and Busy Philipps, who joined in later seasons.
“The ‘90s were kind of crazy for me,” Van Der Beek told Nat Geo.
“I literally went from one day signing my first autograph ever, and being like ‘Oh wow, this is really cool!’ to two weeks later, being mobbed in Seattle, by a crowd of girls at an event.”
He recalled an incident at a signing when they ran out of headshots, fans were stampeding, “and they had to put me in the back of a cop car, to get me out of there.”
“As anybody who has ever been famous among the teenage girl crowd can tell you…it can really get out of control,” he quipped. “I spent the better part of my 20s in abject fear of gaggles of teenage girls.”
Van Der Beek said he thought “Dawson’s Creek” resonated because it “was unconcerned with how teenagers spoke, it was more concerned with how they felt.”
He joked that on set, the cast would sometimes marvel at their scripts and say “who talks like that?”
“And the answer is really, adults with 10 years of therapy. But it just kind of worked. Because it gave voice to a lot of that awkwardness you feel when you’re not a kid anymore but you’re not quite an adult, and you’re just trying to figure everything out.”
On the big screen, he starred in movies like “Varsity Blues” (1998), “The Rules of Attraction” (2002) overlapping with “Dawson’s,” cementing his “heartthrob” status.
“Varsity Blues” also starred Paul Walker, Jon Voight, and Scott Caan, and his rebellious character was a shift from the earnest Dawson. In the film’s most famous scene, his character, Mox, shouts at his father, “I don’t want your life!”
In what would become a signature move for Van Der Beek, he later poked fun at his own image. When the 2019 college admissions scandal — which saw both Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin serve time behind bars — was named “Varsity Blues,” the actor weighed in, commenting on Twitter, “If only there was a succinct turn of phrase these kids could have used to inform their parents they were not desirous of their life path.”
On the small screen, in his biggest role post-Dawson, Van Der Beek went on to play a fictional version of himself in the cult hit ABC sitcom “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23,” which aired from 2012 to 2013 and co-starred Krysten Ritter.
“I love James. We got along so well. We had such a great time together,” Ritter told Us Weekly in 2024.
His career never reached the height’s of his ’90s heyday, but still moved along at a steady clip. He was in “One Tree Hill” in 2008, several episodes of “How I Met Your Mother,” from 2008 to 2013, “CSI: Cyber” from 2015 to 2016, “Pose” in 2018, and appeared on “Dancing With the Stars” in 2019.
“I think that’s probably the most important thing for an actor, especially one with some success in the past. Just stay in the game,” he told Vulture in 2013. “And that’s what ‘Apartment 23’ allowed me to do.”
Van Der Beek told the outlet that because “Dawson’s Creek” was a “cultural phenomenon” it was hard for his other roles to “compete” with that.
He was married to “Party of Five” actress Heather McComb from 2003 to 2010. Following their split, he met Kimberly on a 2009 trip to Israel, and they tied the knot in 2010. The couple share six children: Olivia, 15, Joshua, 13, Annabel, 12, Emilia, 9, Gwendolyn, 7, and Jeremiah, 4.
In fall of 2020, the late actor and his family left Hollywood and relocated to a ranch in Texas.
He later revealed that the reason for their move was a death in the family, health scares for Kimberly, and getting booted off of Season 28 of “DWTS.”
“In the last ten months, we’ve had two late-term pregnancy losses, each of which put @vanderkimberly in the hospital, we spent Christmas break thinking she had a tumor (the doctor was wrong, thank god),” he wrote via Instagram. “I was favored to win…and my mom died.” On top of the COVID-19 pandemic, those events “led to some drastic changes in our lives, and dreams, and priorities… and landed us here.”
Although the star had cancer since August 2023, he announced his diagnosis in November 2024.
“I’ve been dealing with this pretty much in secret for a while, and in the past, I’ve found it helpful and cathartic to share things publicly,” he told People that month. “And I’ve found a lot of support that way. But more than that, I really wanted to raise awareness.”
Months before his death, the actor cycled back to “Dawson’s Creek,” as he auctioned off memorabilia to fund his health battle. Per the Hollywood Reporter, he raised $50K.
“I’ve been storing these treasures for years, waiting for the right time to do something with them, and with all of the recent unexpected twists and turns life has presented recently, it’s clear that the time is now,” he told People in November.
Although he had a reported net worth of $3 million, his friends set up a GoFundMe at the time of his death. The page reads, “In the wake of this loss, Kimberly and the children are facing an uncertain future. The costs of James’s medical care and the extended fight against cancer have left the family out of funds.”
His former cast mates also rallied around him, as the rest of the cast got together in September at Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York City for a live table reading of the show’s 1998 pilot episode. The event benefitted F Cancer and Van Der Beek himself.
He had to miss it amid his health issues, but in a video message, he expressed gratitude for “my angel Michelle Williams,” for organizing it, and joked that Lin-Manuel Miranda, who attended in his place, was a “new up and comer.”
“Despite every effort … I won’t get to be there,” he said on Instagram. “I won’t get to stand on that stage and thank every soul in the theater for showing up for me, and against cancer, when I needed it most.”
Steven Spielberg, who is Dawson’s idol in the show, also showed up to support him in the form of a video message. “Dawson, you made it. Maybe someday, I will get to have a Dawson’s closet,” the legendary director said.
Philipps, 46, teared up on Instagram, explaining to her followers that it was “heartbreaking for a million different reasons” for Van Der Beek to miss it.
“But I was so glad that Kimberly and all the kids [were there],” she added.
When his family attended the event, they received a standing ovation.
“And all that love that would have otherwise been directed at me, was directed at my family,” he told Variety in December. “It was just one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever gotten to witness. I’m just so grateful to the fans for doing that.”
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