For a worldwide generation of young television viewers in the 1990s, James Van Der Beek, who has died aged 48 after suffering from cancer, provided the role model of a sensitive male teenager. As the fresh-faced Dawson Leery in the American drama Dawson’s Creek (1998-2003) – shown in the UK on Channel 4 and then on Channel 5 – he starred in a series portraying friendship, first love and the trials and tribulations of adolescence in the fictional coastal town of Capeside, Massachusetts.
The nerdy Dawson’s idealism and habit of over-analysing often give him unrealistic expectations and a tendency to make long emotional speeches. “It’s not about the kiss – it’s about the journey and creating a sustaining magic,” he reflects in an early episode.
With the ambition to be a film director, Dawson has posters from Steven Spielberg’s blockbusters on his bedroom wall and sees life in terms of movie moments.
Van Der Beek was 20 and studying at college in New Jersey when he landed the role of the 15-year-old high-school student.
“My concern was basically getting my school work done and commuting three hours to do a show eight times a week,” he said, after making the first series in North Carolina. “In that respect, I really kind of identify with Dawson, that he is very driven, almost to the point of – not obsession, but just really occupied with his passion.”
Dawson’s Creek was created by Kevin Williamson, who previously wrote the films Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), both also focusing on groups of young friends. When Williamson auditioned Van Der Beek, he recognised in him “that nervousness that made it seem like he was pre-thinking and over-thinking and over-compensating constantly like he was insecure” – and he cast him as Dawson.
The programme followed its characters from adolescence to adulthood and brought worldwide fame to Van Der Beek, as well as to Katie Holmes, who played the headstrong Joey Potter, Dawson’s childhood best friend and later his girlfriend, Michelle Williams as Jen Lindley, his next-door neighbour and first date, and Joshua Jackson, as his sarcastic mate Pacey Witter.
Gaining heart-throb status, Van Der Beek needed police escorts and was once asked to leave a shopping mall when he was besieged by teenage girls. “You cease to be a human being,” he said. “It’s as if you’re a novelty item.”
But fame also catapulted him to starring roles in films, including as a rebellious high-school football player in the coming-of-age drama Varsity Blues (1999) and as Sean Bateman, a promiscuous, drug-dealing student in Roger Avary’s The Rules of Attraction (2002), adapted from the Bret Easton Ellis novel. He even played himself, an actor in a Hollywood studio’s dressing room, in the comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), directed by Kevin Smith.
James was born in Cheshire, Connecticut, to Melinda (nee Weber), a dancer and gymnastics studio manager, and James Van Der Beek, a mobile phone company executive. He went to the college-prep school Cheshire academy.
At the age of 13, during a school football match, Van Der Beek suffered concussion. Ordered to take a year’s break from the game, he turned his interest to drama and landed the leading role of Danny Zuko in a school production of Grease. “I fell in love with the theatre,” he said. “I did go back and play a little football, but it basically got to the point where I was doing more acting than anything else.”
After signing with an agent in New York, he made his professional stage debut off-Broadway with the Signature Theatre Company, as Fergus in Edward Albee’s one-act play Finding the Sun (1994); “James Van Der Beek is refreshingly un-self-conscious,” wrote a New York Times critic.
He also appeared in the musical Shenandoah at the Goodspeed Opera House, Connecticut, in 1994, before making his film debut as a high-school bully, alongside George C Scott and Kathy Bates, in Angus (1995).
Then, he enrolled to study English at Drew University, New Jersey, and while there had a small role in the film I Love You, I Love You Not (1996), starring Claire Danes. On stage, he played a disturbed teenager in the off-Broadway comedy My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine (1997). After landing his breakthrough role in Dawson’s Creek, he eventually dropped out of university.
Van Der Beek’s later TV roles included an aspiring rock star, with a deliberately over-exaggerated Canadian accent and wearing a fat suit, in 2008 and 2013 episodes of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother; doctors in Mercy (2010) and Friends with Better Lives (2014); a fictionalised version of himself in Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 (2012-13); an FBI field agent in CSI: Cyber (2015-16); and the vengeful Matt Bromley, revealing a workmate’s affair, in the first series of Pose (2018).
He also created and starred in What Would Diplo Do? (2017), a TV mockumentary based on the American DJ and record label owner Wesley “Diplo” Penzt. Fiona Sturges wrote in the Guardian that the programme, featuring a character with “the life skills of a toddler”, was “somewhere between Spinal Tap and The Office”, adding: “Crucial to its success is Van Der Beek, who captures the swagger and the bubbling madness that comes with wealth and celebrity, while somehow locating a thread of humanity.”
For his starring role as an FBI agent in the film Formosa Betrayed (2009), Van Der Beek won the best actor award at the San Diego film festival.
He was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2023, announcing his illness the following year. Last year, a Dawson’s Creek cast reunion took place at the Richard Rodgers theatre, New York, for a one-night charity event. Unable to attend, he sent a video message of thanks to fans and his fellow stars.
Van Der Beek married the actor Heather McComb in 2003; they divorced seven years later. He is survived by his second wife, Kimberly (nee Brook), whom he married in 2010, and their six children, Olivia, Joshua, Annabel, Emilia, Gwendolyn and Jeremiah.
• James David Van Der Beek, actor, born 8 March 1977; died 11 February 2026
