James Van Der Beek, best known to many as Dawson Leery from his breakout role in the late-’90s drama Dawson’s Creek, died at the age of 48 on Wednesday. Although to many he will forever be Dawson, an aspiring teen film director, Van Der Beek, who battled colorectal cancer, built an impressive, varied career in the entertainment industry.
In his last on-screen role, the actor played Dean Wilson, the school district superintendent and mayoral candidate in Elle, the Legally Blonde prequel series set to premiere on Prime Video on July 1. Here’s a look back at seven of Van Der Beek’s best roles.
Two shows, CSI: Cyber, in which he played FBI Special Agent Elijah Mundo, and Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, in which Van Der Beek played a fictional version of himself, are currently unavailable to stream anywhere.
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Dawson’s Creek is the primetime soap opera that made James Van Der Beek a household name. The series, which ran for six seasons from 1998-2003, featured a cast of young talent, including Katie Holmes, Michelle Williams and Joshua Jackson. The show followed Dawson Leery, an aspiring filmmaker, and his friends as they faced the many challenges of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood.
This 1999 film is the title that really helped to kick off his career. Varsity Blues follows underdog football player Jonathan “Mox” Moxon (Van Der Beek), who ends up being called to replace his high school football team’s star quarterback (played by Paul Walker). Now he must grapple with this new responsibility — to both the team and his town — and the intense pressures that come with it.
James Van Der Beek made many cameo appearances throughout his career. In 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, he appears as himself alongside Jason Biggs, dressed as Jay opposite Biggs as Bob. Sorta. Things get a bit meta when it’s revealed that both actors are shooting a movie based on Bluntman and Chronic, the fictional superhero alter egos of the movie’s titular slackers.
It was clear through his choice of roles that there was a lot more to Van Der Beek than the work he did on Dawson’s Creek. 2002’s The Rules of Attraction is a great example of the actor’s range and need to distance himself from the role that made him a star. The movie, based on Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, stars Van Der Beek as Sean Bateman (the younger brother of American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman) and follows him and his friends as they do drugs, have sex and navigate the hedonistic, privileged college life of the 1980s.
Van Der Beek took a bunch of creative swings throughout his career. One of his more underappreciated roles came in 2017 when he played a fictional version of Diplo, the world-renowned DJ and music producer. The short-lived comedy was co-created by Van Der Beek and executive-produced by Diplo, and told a variety of humorous, sometimes bizarre, life lessons through the eyes of the prolific DJ.
James Van Der Beek played Matt, a powerful Donald Trump-like character, in the first season of Ryan Murphy’s ’80s-’90s-set drama Pose. The series, which ran from 2018-2021, explored the underground trans ballroom scene of the decade, featuring prominent white actors like Van Der Beek in supporting roles to help boost the show’s trans representation. For an actor who cultivated a reputation for being a kind and earnest family man, he really excelled at playing this unlikeable guy.
Van Der Beek can be heard in Castle in the Sky, the 1986 Studio Ghibli classic directed by Hayao Miyazaki. He’s not in the original Japanese version, but took on a voice role when the movie was later dubbed into English by Disney in 2003. The film is about a girl named Sheeta who falls out of the sky with a mysterious amulet. She embarks on an adventure with a boy named Pazu to uncover her lineage and connection to a floating castle in the sky. James Van Der Beek provided the voice of Pazu. Anna Paquin, Cloris Leachman and Mark Hamill also star.
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