James Van Der Beek, an actor best known for his role in the 1990’s TV show Dawson’s Creekhe is dead. He was 48 years old.
In an email to CBC News, a spokesperson for the actor confirmed his death.
Van Der Beek was diagnosed with Stage 3 colorectal cancer in November 2024. Since then, he has been chronicling his life with cancer and regularly talking about his family’s life on Instagram.
A statement posted on the actor’s official Instagram page on Wednesday said he died this morning.
“He met his last days with courage, faith, and grace. He has a lot to share about his wishes, love for humanity and the sanctity of time. Those days will come,” said a statement from the actor’s family posted on Instagram.
“At this time we ask for peaceful privacy as we mourn our loving husband, father, son, brother and friend.”
A one-time theater kid, Van Der Beek would go on to film The Varsity Blues and on TV CSI: Cyber like FBI special agent Elijah Mundo, but he was forever connected Dawson’s Creekwhich ran from 1998 to 2003 on the WB.
The series followed a group of high school friends as they learn about falling in love, building real friendships and finding a footing in life.
Van Der Beek, who was 20 at the time, played 15-year-old Dawson Leery, who aspired to become a Steven Spielberg-level director. Dawson’s Creekwhich used Paula Cole’s I don’t want to wait like its versatile theme song, it helped define WB as a place for teenagers and young adults to relate to with its frank dialogue and frank talk about sex.
The show has made a name for itself with Van Der Beek, Joshua Jackson, Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams.
The show caused a stir when one of the teenagers started dating a teacher 20 years her senior and when Holmes’ character climbed out of Dawson’s bedroom window and they curled up together.
At times, Van Der Beek struggled to break out of the shadow of the show, but ended up relying on self-restraint, such as in videos for Funny Or Die and songs by singer Kesha. Blow it music video, featuring a laser gun battle with a pop star in a nightclub and dead unicorns.
“It is difficult to compete with something that has been a tradition Dawson’s Creek that’s how it was,” he told Vulture in 2013. “It went on for a long time. That’s many hours playing one character in front of people. So it’s only natural that they associate it with that.”
More than a decade after the show first aired, a scene at the end of the show’s third season became a GIF. It was for Dawson, watching his partner start dating his best friend, he burst into tears.
“It wasn’t scripted that I was supposed to cry; it was one of those things where it’s a magical moment and it happens on the scene,” she told Vanity Fair.
He was still driving Dawson’s CreekVan Der Beek hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live and he got an important role The Varsity Bluesplaying a second-string quarterback in high school who jumps into the breach when the star gets injured.
Van Der Beek’s character, Mox, turns out not to be a football fanatic, preferring to read Kurt Vonnegut and yearning for a college education that would allow him to escape the jock mentality of his Texas hometown. “I don’t want your life,” he shouted at one point.
Critic Roger Ebert called her “persuasive and likable.”
Life after Dawson
Other projects he built in the background Dawson’s Creek including co-starring Wesley “Diplo” Pentz, a cool but lovable music producer in a mockumentary on Viceland, What would Diplo do?
In 2019, he reached the semi-finals of ABC Dancing with the stars and played a balding, out-of-character ex-boyfriend How I Met Your Mother.
“The more you make fun of yourself and don’t try to demand any kind of respect, the more people seem to respect you,” she told Vanity Fair in 2011. “I’ve always been an actor trapped in a leading man’s body.”
Between 2003 and 2013, he made appearances in shows like Criminal Minds again One Tree Hill. He played himself with the intensity of a crackpot on the ABC drama hosted by Krysten Ritter Don’t trust the B—- at Apartment 23and temporary CSI a spinoff CSI: Cyber and CBS Better Health Friends.
He has also appeared in several movies, such as Kevin Smith’s 2001 comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and its 2019 sequel, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. He is also back in the adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis Laws of Attraction in 2002 opposite Jessica Biel and Kate Bosworth.
In 2025, he was revealed as Griffin Maskandi singerafter singing a John Denver cover Take Me Home, Country Roads again I had some help by Post Malone and Morgan Wallen.
Child theater
Van Der Beek, who grew up in Cheshire, Conn., began acting at age 13 after suffering a football injury that kept him out for a year on doctor’s orders. He got the part of Danny Zuko in his school production Apply.
He stuck to theater and won a scholarship to the University of New Jersey, Drew University, but dropped out of school when he got a role. Dawson’s Creek. In 2024, he returned to campus to receive an honorary degree for his “exemplary dedication and commitment to Drew’s work,” the university said.
Van Der Beek is survived by his wife, Kimberly Van Der Beek, and six children, Olivia, Joshua, Annabel, Emilia, Gwendolyn and Jeremiah.
