Fate certainly played a hand in James Van Der Beek's entrance into the acting world,
but it was his dedication and talent that earned leading roles in "Dawson's Creek" and
two provocative new films - "I Love You...I Love You Not" and "Harvest."
Suffering a mild concussion when he was 13 years old, the athletic Van Der Beek wasn't
permitted to play on the football team that year. So, for the first time, he decided to try out
for the school play and landed the lead role of Danny Zuko in the school's production of
"Grease." Bitten by the acting bug, he continued to do local children's theater in his
hometown of Cheshire, Conn.
He was still focused on acting at age 16, so his mother agreed one summer to travel the
three hours each way to New York City in order for him to pursue acting professionally.
While he landed an agent and a manager on their very first visit, he didn't find much success
auditioning for commercials.
The next year, he was cast in the Off-Broadway play, "Finding the Sun," which was written
and directed by Edward Albee. He describes this as the defining experience for him as
an actor, and commuted six hours every day during the limited three-month run for rehearsals
and performances in the middle of high school. After that experience, he starred in "Shenandoah"
at the Goodspeed Opera House.
His first on-screen performance came with a starring role in the 1995 feature film "Angus,"
and he is featured in the upcoming release "I Love You...I Love You Not" with Claire Danes.
Last summer, he completed the independent feature film "Harvest."
A dean's list student, Van Der Beek received an academic scholarship from Drew University
in Madison, N.J., where he majors in English with a minor in sociology. In what little free
time he has, he enjoys writing and playing all kinds of sports.
Courtesy of UltimateTV.com
Much like the experience of the character he portrays, James Van Der Beek's dedication and
talent surfaced at an early age. A mild concussion sidelined his school football career and
instead Van Der Beek found himself playing the lead role in a local children's theater production
of "Grease." He fell in love with the theater and continued to perform locally.
"Dawson reminds me of myself when I was 15," says Van Der Beek. "I grew up in a small
New England town and vacationed on Cape Cod, where the show takes place, and we both
come from loving, supportive homes. We also look alike," jokes the 20-year old actor.
"Dawson and I were both very impassioned at an early age," explains Van Der Beek.
"Dawson is a burgeoning film maker, whose overactive imagination and idealism
sometimes make him oblivious. He's prone to rejecting reality for a more romantic scenario.
He's a bit of an innocent and is frequently off in his own little world, all of which I can
definitely relate to."
When Van Der Beek was 16, his mother, noting his intense interest in performing,
offered to support his aspirations by accompanying him on daily six-hour round trips into
New York City, to test the waters. In spite of landing an agent and manager on their first trip
into the city, Van Der Beek spent a year auditioning for commercials without much success.
At 17, Van Der Beek was cast in the off-Broadway play written and directed by Edward Albee,
"Finding the Sun." Juggling the long commute for rehearsals and performances during the
play's limited three-month run while attending high school, Van Der Beek credits the
play as the defining experience for him as an actor and still managed to finish the
school year second in his class.
After his off-Broadway debut, he went on to star in "Shenandoah" at the Goodspeed
Opera House. His first screen performance occurred in the 1995 feature film ANGUS
as an arrogant jock. Van Der Beek also appeared in the Miramax film, "I LOVE YOU...I LOVE
YOU NOT with Claire Danes, and most recently in the independent feature film HARVEST.
An excellent student, Van Der Beek received an academic scholarship to attend
Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, where he majored in English and Sociology
and made the Dean's List. He is currently on a leave of absence while shooting
DAWSON'S CREEK in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Columbia TriStar Interactive Privacy Notice
Copyright 1997 Columbia TriStar Interactive.
JAMES Van Der BEEK (Rick Sanford) makes his feature film
debut in "ANGUS." He also recently finished filming the feature "I Love
You, I Love You Not," starring Claire Danes.
Theatrically, James starred as Fergus in "Finding the Sun," which
was written and directed by three-time Pulitzer Prize winner playwright
Edward Albee. He has also been featured in Goodspeed Opera House's
production of "Shenandoah."
His television credits include the Nickelodeon series "Clarissa
Explains it All" (Paul) and the ABC After-School Special "The Red
Booth."
James is an avid gymnast and excels in all athletics. He is a member
of the National Honor Society and has just received the Drew University
Presidential Scholarship.
Cheshire Academy Grad to Star in "Dawson's Creek"
Cheshire, CT -- The Denver Post has already dubbed James Van Der Beek, Cheshire Academy
class of 1995, "...one of the most photogenic young actors to emerge recently on the
small screen." With a staring role as "Dawson Leery" in the new WB network show
"Dawson's Creek," James' star is definitely on the rise.
As a resident of Cheshire, James was named the Town Scholar for his class.
While at the Academy, James was a consistent honor roll student, member of
the National Honor Society, and a student proctor. After graduating in 1995,
James attended Drew University.
"Everyone here is very excited for James. During his four years at the Academy,
he was a role model," remarked Cheshire Academy spokesperson Kate Dombrowski.
"James was a well-rounded student who always found time, amid his busy
professional schedule, to achieve good grades and serve as an active member
of the Cheshire Academy community. We are proud of the fact that a review in
the January 12, 1998 Hartford Courant noted, `...all the kids on Dawson's
Creek are quick-witted, eloquent, and smart,'."
"Dawson's Creek" premiered on Tuesday, January 20, 1998 at 8:00 p.m. on the WB Television
Network.
Courtesy of Cheshire Academy
CREEK GOD
Hunky James Van Der Beek dives into Dawson's Creek
It was "weird enough," recalls James Van Der Beek, to be
tooling around Hollywood last January in a stretch limo.
Just nine months earlier, the English major at New Jersey's
Drew University had put his studies on hold to pursue a full-time
acting career. Now he was en route to a press conference to
promote the popular series, Dawson's Creek, in which Van Der
Beek, 21, plays Dawson Leery, a small-town teen striving to
become the next Steven Spielberg. Glancing out the limousine
window, the newcomer suddenly beheld his own image on a billboard
in all its larger-than-life glory. "I started laughing,"
he says, "because I didn't know how to deal with the hype. I keep
asking myself how did I get here?"
Credit millions of rabid teens for making Dawson's Creek a
Peyton Place for the Clearasil set, the WB's highest-rated
series, and one of the top prime-time shows among teens. Since
its debut Jan. 20, the series has even bested Buffy the
Vampire Slayer (which Creek follows on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET). But
reviews have been mixed. While many find the characters
appealing, others have complained that Dawson and his horny young
friends have an unseemly preoccupation with sex. "We get dialogue
about `sex,' `breasts' and `genitalia' in the very first scene,"
wrote Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales. "Dawson's
Creek is a raging stream of hormones." Van Der Beek disagrees.
"It's been adults mainly who have the problem," he says. "No one
under 20 has said, `That's too much sex; that's not the way it
really is. "
The controversy doesn't seem to have dimmed Van Der Beek's
charm. "I think James is going to be a huge star," says Creek's
creator, Kevin Williamson, 33 (who wrote Scream and Scream 2).
"He's very serious and single-minded about acting.
But what is nice about him and the other kids is that they're
unaffected. They're not yet stars, so they're not concerned with
the size of their trailer . . . yet!"
Costar Joshua Jackson, 19, who plays Dawson's libidinous pal
Pacey, says that Van Der Beek is just as "sweet" and "earnest" as
the character he plays. "He's the good-looking, polite,
college-educated kid who says `sir' and ma'am.' "
That squeaky-clean image is no act. Jackson shared an apartment
with Van Der Beek during the show's four-month shoot in
Wilmington, N.C., last fall. "People called us the Odd Couple,"
says Jackson, "and I was definitely not Felix."
Perhaps Van Der Beek's proper New England upbringing
accounts for his good manners. His father, Jim, a phone company
employee, and mother, Melinda, a Broadway dancer turned gym
teacher, raised James, brother Jared, 18, and sister Juliana, 16,
in Cheshire, Conn. In the eighth grade at public school, Van Der
Beek traded football for footlights after suffering a concussion
trying to catch a pass. Landing the role of Danny
Zuko in a community-theater production of Grease, he was hooked.
"They dyed my hair black, and I was still a boy soprano," he
says. In 1994, Van Der Beek, by then a junior at the private
Cheshire Academy, was commuting by train into New York City after
school to rehearse for his Off-Broadway debut as
a young idealist in Edward Albee's Finding the Sun. That same
year, he made his feature-film bow, playing an arrogant jock in
Angus. "[People] told me, `Oh, this is going to catapult you.'
But the movie came and went. Now people tell me the same is going
to happen with Dawson's Creek, and I take it with a grain of
salt."
In fact, he almost botched his L.A. audition last April. "He
was really nervous, and it showed," says Williamson, who calmed
his protégé down with a pep talk. "Then he came back into the
room and stunned us. We knew he was Dawson. He's very bright, but
he's also very vulnerable. I like that, because that keeps him 15
years old."
It's a quality that Van Der Beek, who's currently not
dating, projects offscreen as well. "I've met some cool people in
L.A.," he says. "They took me around and showed me the whole
Hollywood scene." Among his discoveries? "I saw
people wearing sunglasses at night! I always thought that was a
joke, but they really do it!"
-- MICHAEL A. LIPTON
-- PAULA YOO in Los Angeles
James Van Der Beek Looks familar because . . . he's the smart as
Spielberg young turk on the teen t.v. drama, "Dawson's Creek."
Look for him next in . . . more episodes of the increasingly popular t.v. show.
from Young Hollywood top 100 list
His audition for the starring role of virginal 15-year-old Dawson
Leery in Dawson's Creek was a real pain. As an English major at
Drew University in New Jersey, Van Der Beek had to miss school so
he could trek into the city (New York, that is) in the middle of
the day. And when they wanted to fly him out to L.A. for a screen
test, he actually questioned their decision.
"I'm 20 years old," he said. And then he read the full script. "I
thought, Oooh, I really want to do this. I hope I didn't just
talk myself out of the job."
Not to worry. Within three days, Van Der Beek landed the role.
It may be to his credit that Dawson is 15 going on 40. "I
like the fact that all the characters are honest, yet flawed in
some ways. I mean, the dialogue is great, but even more than
that, what's going on underneath it is really incredible," he
says.
What's going on in Van Der Beek's own life is even more
incredible. Before the show had even premiered on the WB, he had
already become a major player in the world of teen heartthrobs,
thanks to a marketing campaign that plastered his face on
buses, billboards and even the J. Crew catalogue.
Of course, you may have seen Van Der Beek before all this hoopla.
He played the bully in "Angus" and had a limited run in "Finding
the Sun" off-Broadway. More recently, he took on the completely
un-Dawson-like indie film "Harvest", with "Private Parts'" Mary
McCormack, about a group of farmers who come into hard times and
decide to grow marijuana.
Talk about being on a major high.
--Amanda Rudolph
from eonline!
DAWSON'S PEAK
B Y T E D J O H N S O N
The WB's drama about four hot-talking teens navigating the
wander years lives up to its hype lash back to May: Shortly after
they all first met, Dawson's Creek stars Katie Holmes and
Michelle Williams pulled a prank on fellow actors James Van Der
Beek and Joshua Jackson.
At the Howard Johnson's in Wilmington, North Carolina, where the
hormone-heavy drama is filmed, they locked their male costars out
of their room, leaving them standing in the hall, clad only in
their boxers. "We just terrorized them," Williams says. "They
didn't want to go into the lobby because they were only in their
underwear."
Fast-forward a few months: The cast routinely engages in some
major discourse. Politics. Religion. Welfare reform. "Nasty
arguments," Williams calls them. "But we all can hold our own."
The foursome's bounce between youthful kidding and adult
conversation mirrors the dynamics on Dawson's Creek (WB,
Tuesdays, 9 P.M./ET), the show in which kids talk like adults,
act like adults, even sleep with adults. Which may be why the
Matchbox 20 crowd is watching.
Once again, creator Kevin Williamson has captured the self-aware,
media-savvy character of this age group, who in the last year
flocked to cineplexes everywhere to his trio of hits: "Scream,"
"I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Scream 2."
With that karma, Dawson's Creek seems poised to inherit the
90210/Melrose Place/Party of Five mantle as the show of the
moment, the can't-miss series destined to launch thousands of
CD soundtrack sales, teen-magazine covers and frenzied
shopping-mall appearances.
In its first four weeks the drama hovered around a 5.2 rating,
reaching more than 5 million homes. Paltry by major network
standards but impressive for the WB, placing the show ahead
of the hot Buffy the Vampire Slayer, its lead-in on the
network's new Tuesday-night schedule. More impressive:
According to the Nielsens, the show is No. 1 among girls 12 to
17 and No. 4 among teens overall. "So far, so good," says
Garth Ancier, the WB's president of entertainment.
No one can say all this has happened by chance. Producers
cast four well-clothed, well-groomed actors. There's Van Der
Beek, 20, as aspiring 15-year-old filmmaker Dawson Leery,
the object of a triangle involving his childhood pal Joey Potter
(Holmes, 19) and the girl-next-door-with-a-past, Jennifer
Lindley (Williams, 17). Rounding out the foursome is
Dawson's best friend and fellow video-store clerk Pacey
Witter (Jackson, 19), unable to score with women his own age
but succeeding with his English teacher (Leann Hunley), more
than 20 years his senior.
Backed by a $3 million marketing push, Dawson's Creek was
generating word of mouth long before its January debut. A
promotional tape passed around to the press last summer
created a great deal of buzz for its risqué content: namely, the
fact that Dawson and Joey sleep in the same bed (platonically),
as do Pacey and his teacher (definitely not platonically).
By December, the series was a marketing event, with posters
on buses, billboards at major intersections and trailers in
theaters. J. Crew announced that it would be the show's
"official wardrobe provider" and featured the cast of then
unknowns in its winter-spring catalog. By January, promos
were running in Blockbuster video stores to the tune of Paula
Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait," repeated so often that some
were calling it the Dawson's Creek theme. Luckily for WB
executives, Cole gave final permission to use the song for the
show's title sequence only days before its debut.
Even in the relative isolation of Wilmington, a historic
Southern town, the trappings of celebrity are starting to crop
up. The four young actors are now recognized on the street
(all but Jackson have hired personal publicists). Their pictures
have popped up on the wall of a local coffee shop. And some
cast members have started acquiring things, such as new cars.
"I can buy nicer gifts for people," Holmes says. "But it is not
like we are going overboard and shopping all the time. I think
we have good heads on our shoulders."
While Wilmington has become a movie and TV production
center (for scenes inside the high school, the show uses an old
Matlock set), it's hardly Hollywood, and almost all the crew is
made up of locals. On the set back in December, Holmes was
at the center of an upcoming episode in which her character
enters the Miss Windjammer Pageant and sings a rendition of
"On My Own," from "Les Misérables." A glittering group of
extras in sequined gowns crowded a stage, all of them forcing
smiles. Then the mood took an irreverent turn as both male
and female crew members started trying on the winner's
crown.
One almost expects this spectacle to turn into the bloody prom
scene from "Carrie," what with Williamson's pedigree of
slasher movies. Dawson's Creek is his chance to prove he can
write more than horror and, likewise, that teens will watch
more than gore. "You know, I think it is the 16- and
17-year-olds who we learn from," says the 32-year-old
Williamson. "If you look at Dawson's Creek, it is the adult
figures who learn from the kids, who are smarter than we give
them credit for. And they are smarter than they have ever
been."
Later on the set, Jackson's Pacey comes onstage to rail against
the concept of beauty contests, dressed in a tuxedo and
blue-and-white face paint, à la Mel Gibson in "Braveheart."
Perhaps no other series has featured so many references to
movies and TV; in the premiere alone there were 46, including
16 about Steven Spielberg and his movies. In fact, one
episode this month features a parody of Williamson's own
"Scream," itself an homage to horror movies.
"This is the way I write," Williamson says. "But it is not for
the sake of making a reference. I try to make sure it drives the
story forward. When [the characters talk about] Spielberg,
they are not just talking about Spielberg. They are talking
about how he had to outgrow his Peter Pan syndrome. Which
reflects on Dawson having to change his life and make a
decision to face reality."
from TV Guide
JAMES VAN DER BEEK
ACTOR
"My agent told me that there were momentary flashes when I
reminded him a tad of Jimmy Stewart," says Dawson's Creek star
James Van Der Beek. "That was the nicest compliment."
The generational update: On the runaway WB teen hit, the 6-foot
Van Der Beek, 21, is indeed the stalwart center -- but of Mr.
Smith's So-Called Wonderful Life at Melrose Place, 90210. The
show has created controversy, with critics charging explicit
hormonal overload and young Web site fans identifying with its
puberty vérité. Van Der Beek plays Dawson Leery, an earnest
15-year-old film fanatic who idolizes Steven Spielberg and
practices moviemaking on his hyperarticulate friends in a small
Massachusetts beach town. "James is so good-looking, yet has this
incredibly analytical, intelligent side," says series creator
Kevin Williamson. Creek costar Joshua Jackson, who plays Dawson's
buddy Pacey, a high school student who had an affair with his
English teacher, agrees. "James is very much Dawson," he says, "a
couple of years down the line."
The eldest of three children of Jim, a Cheshire, Conn.,
telephone-company employee, and Melinda, a gym teacher, Van Der
Beek, who is single, was sidelined from football in the eighth
grade with a concussion and began acting in community theater.
Now on leave from New Jersey's Drew University, where he's an
English major, he tips his lid to his most dependable beauty aid,
the baseball cap. "I basically jump in the shower, throw a hat on
and take it off at work. In half an hour, my hair is cool," he
says.
"I'm ambidextrous. I wear it both ways, but on formal occasions,
brim forward."
Such savoir faire impresses Michelle Williams, who plays Dawson's
next-door neighbor Jennifer. "James is very graceful and
unassuming," she says. "A very smooth, even, cool guy." The kind
of guy who sums up his ablutions in three simple words: "Soap is
good."
But the price of playing a 15-year-old with 21 years of hormones
coursing through your veins is constant vigilance. "For Dawson's
Creek, I have to shave a lot," Van Der Beek admits. "I
shave twice every day."
From People: 50 Most Beautiful People
VAN DER BEEK BRIDGES 'CREEK'
"Dawson's Creek" star James Van Der Beek is making the leap to
movies, reports Variety. In Paramount's "Varsity Blues," he will
co-star with Jon Voight and play a second-string high school
quarterback who ends up a hero. He is not the only "Dawson"'s
star to jump to the big screen: Katie Holmes is signed for two
movie roles, one of them to be directed by "Creek" creator Kevin
Williamson.
from People Online Celebrity News March 30, 1998
Creek's Rising
An attractive young cast gives The WB some torrid teen spirit.
By Jeff Yorio
When Jerry Springer seems tamer than some of the news coming out
of the White House, you'd think America would be ready for TV
characters who talk frankly about sex. Instead, a firestorm of
criticism has greeted Dawson's Creek, a series in which high
school girls compliment the shapeliness of one another's breasts
and the young lead character admits he "walks his dog" (a
euphemism for solitary sex) while watching Katie Couric.
Of course, teenagers' surging sexuality has been a story engine
since Romeo and Juliet, but Dawson's Creek lives (and, some
critics say, dies) by its dialogue. "All these folks talk too
much for their own good," carped the New York Post when the WB
drama debuted in January, dismissing Dawson's as "a swirl of
high-test hormones, brittle banter, over-ripe bodies and
underdeveloped thought processes."
In case you haven't heard (or change channels after Buffy the
Vampire Slayer), Dawson's Creek is the semiautobiographical
creation of Kevin Williamson, the red-hot screenwriter of Scream,
Scream 2 and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Set in a breezy
coastal Massachusetts town, it follows four teens caught
somewhere between the worlds of David Mamet and Beverly Hills,
90210 as they struggle to come of age.
It's helping the WB come of age too. With heaping doses of hip
music and distinctive pop-culture wordplay that might be
described as Creekspeak, Dawson's has quickly dethroned Buffy as
the nascent network's top-rated show. And though the dialogue is
occasionally didactic, nobody has a nose for teen spirit like
Williamson.
"He lets [teens] speak eloquently about the things that are
plaguing them," says Van Der Beek, who plays title character
Dawson Leery, "and they aren't always necessarily able to do
that." In the first episode, Dawson's childhood gal pal Joey (The
Ice Storm's Katie Holmes) explains why she won't sleep over
anymore: "I just think our emerging hormones are destined to
alter our relationship, and I'm trying to limit the fallout." He
talks her into staying anyway, and sexual tension begins to build
even before the opening credits do.
An aspiring filmmaker who idolizes Steven Spielberg, Dawson has
lived a relatively sheltered life for his 15 years. "He's the
dork in all of us, I think," says Van Der Beek, who turns 21 this
week. "Dawson does all the things you want to do but you're
afraid to do because of what will happen. Dawson does that, and
then it happens anyway, and then you watch." But Dawson's
misadventures are mild compared with those of his pal Pacey
(Jackson), a witty cut-up who gets romantically involved with his
English teacher. Says 19-year-old Jackson (The Mighty Ducks),
"I've seen My So-Called Life a couple times and I think that was
a good show, but there were no happy times--it was always some
sort of melodrama. I hope that's the difference with our show.
Teendom is tough and it can be very uncomfortable, but there are
happy times too. Life has to be good sometimes, or else we might
as well all do a lemming leap."
That bittersweet slant defines the show's focal point, the bond
between soul mates Dawson and Joey. Her shattered family life
contrasts starkly with his cozy existence, and when he starts
dating Jen (Michelle Williams), the new girl on the block, Joey
has her first brush with the green-eyed monster. Though Holmes,
18, claims to be a stranger to unrequited love, she can relate.
"Everybody goes through that stage of having a crush on somebody
without realizing it, or realizing it and not feeling the same
way," she says. "You just combine all that, and you get
somewhere in the middle of Joey and Dawson's relationship."
But in spite of all the bristling sexual energy, Williamson
claims critics of the show are missing the point. "[These kids]
may talk big," he says, "but look at the behavior. An ounce of
behavior is worth a pound of words, and if you really watch
what's happening on the show, it's about this young boy who
wants to hold this girl's hand at the movies."
Though Williamson has gone on to huge box-office success and a
multimillion-dollar deal with Miramax since conceiving the
series, Creek faced some rough waters at first. Williamson
originally wrote the show for Fox, but the network passed, he
says, largely because teen-targeted Party of Five was floundering
at the time.
There was another unexpected pitfall. "When I first turned the
script in to my agent, [he] thought it was too soft and read too
much like Little House on the Prairie," Williamson admits. "I was
completely shocked. I'm walking into this thing thinking, 'Oh my
God, how do I edge it up?'"
In truth, the saga of Dawson's Creek abounds with edge and irony,
which Williams may capture best. Pondering what all the exposure
will mean for her, the 17-year-old actress pauses, smiles and
says, "I'll be addicted to heroin and robbing mini-marts in a
couple of years, I'm sure."
Oh, to be young and ambitious. *
'Dawson's Creek' airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on the WB.
from totally Teen Tv
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