James Van Der Beek Rich Fury/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment James Van Der Beek, the charismatic actor who starred as the sensitive and insecure Dawson Leery on The WB teen melodrama Dawson's Creek, has lost his battle with colorectal cancer. He was 48. In a statement shared on Van Der Beek's instagram, the actor's wife Kimberly Van Der Beek confirmed his death, writing, "Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning. He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace. There is much to share regarding his wishes, love for humanity and the sacredness of time. Those days will come. For now we ask for peaceful privacy as we grieve our loving husband, father, son, brother, and friend." Related Stories Movies Peggy Steffans, Actress and Widow of Sexploitation Director Joseph Sarno, Dies at 87 Music Brad Arnold, Lead Singer and Founding Member of 3 Doors Down, Dies at 47 View this post on Instagram The father of six kids, Van Der Beek died on Feb. 11, his family announced. He announced in November 2024 that he had "been privately dealing with this diagnosis" - it was Stage 3 - since August 2023. During two summer hiatuses from his hit series, Van Der Beek starred as the principled Texas high school quarterback Jonathan "Mox" Moxon in the Brian Robbins-helmed Varsity Blues (1999) and as the hedonistic Sean Bateman in the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Rules of Attraction (2002), written and directed by Roger Avary. The good-natured Connecticut native also played versions of himself in 2001's Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (in the movie within the movie) and in 2019's Jay & Silent Bob Reboot and for two seasons of the 2012-13 ABC sitcom Don't Trust the B-- in Apartment 23, where he had the self-assurance to portray an actor on the decline. Van Der Beek had been directed by Edward Albee on a New York stage and had played a bully in the coming-of-age film Angus (1995) when he was hired as a Steven Spielberg wannabe on Dawson's Creek, created by Kevin Williamson for Columbia TriStar Television. (He was 20 portraying a 15-year-old.) Set in the fictional town of Capeside, Massachusetts, the show premiered as a midseason replacement on Jan. 20, 1998, and ran for six seasons - the first four are set at Capeside High, freshman through senior years - through May 14, 2003. Van Der Beek appeared on every one of the 128 episodes, as did Katie Holmes as Dawson's best friend and love interest, Joey Potter. With Joshua Jackson as another pal, Pacey Witter, and Michelle Williams as next-door neighbor Jen Lindley, a transplanted New Yorker, they grew up together on the show. "These characters speak very honestly about everything that 15-year-olds are waking up and dealing with every day - relationships, the opposite sex, parents, school, dreams, aspirations," he said during a 1998 appearance on Live With Regis and Kathie Lee. The show was wildly popular with younger viewers, girls in particular. Throughout its run, there was always a "Will they or won't they?" dynamic surrounding Dawson and Joey. In the end, it turns out it's Joey and Pacey who get together, and that's OK. "For the first time in a long time, my life is real. Doesn't matter who ends up with who; in some unearthly way, it's always going to be you and me," Dawson tells Joey during the series' poignant final scene. "What we have goes beyond friendship, beyond lovers. It's forever." The stars of Dawson's Creek, from left: Michelle Williams, Joshua Jackson, James Van Der Beek and Katie Holmes. Fergus Greer/Columbia TriStar Television/Courtesy Everett Collection The oldest of three kids, James David Van Der Beek was born on March 8, 1977, in Cheshire, Connecticut, a bucolic town of white picket fences, not unlike Capeside. His father, Jim, pitched with the Albuquerque Dukes, then the Los Angeles Dodgers' Triple-A affiliate, before working for decades as a telephone executive. His mother, Melinda, attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, danced on Broadway and ran her own gymnastics tumbling school in Cheshire for 27 years. "In eighth grade, we were asked to write a letter to ourselves about where we would be in five years," he said in an interview with Teen Machine. "I wrote that I either wanted to be a pro baseball player like my father or I wanted to be a physical therapist. Acting wasn't anywhere near my mind." After he was banned from playing football in junior high for a year because of a concussion, he turned to acting and was cast as Danny Zuko in a community theater production of Grease. When he was 15 and attending the prestigious Cheshire Academy prep school as a do-no-wrong student on a scholarship, he got his mom to take him to Manhattan to secure representation - and landed an agent and manager on his first tr