James Van Der Beek, the actor whose transition from a small-town teen on Dawson’s Creek into a regular and always-welcome presence on series including Mercy, CSI: Cyber, Pose, How I Met Your Mother, Ugly Betty, and more, died on Wednesday at the age of 48.
Fans around the world learned the news from a post on Van Der Beek’s official Instagram account that read, in part: “Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning. He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace.”
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Born in Cheshire, Connecticut, in 1977, Van Der Beek performed in plays throughout high school, making his off-Broadway debut in Edward Albee’s Finding the Sun at the age of 16, in 1993. Van Der Beek returned to the stage several times during his life (most notably in the 2003 off-Broadway play Rain Dance and in a 2013 production of The Gift at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles), but his knack for performance wasn’t limited by genre, as he proved with his season-stealing stint on Dancing With the Stars in 2019.
While Van Der Beek was best-known for his breakout role as the titular Dawson Leery on Dawson’s Creek, it was another role of his—playing himself opposite Krysten Ritter’s devious party-girl protagonist, Chloe, on the cult-hit ABC sitcom Don’t Trust the B___ in Apartment 23—that underscored just how far he’d come since his teen-drama beginnings. The part allowed the actor to inhabit a heightened, often-ridiculous and hilarious version of himself with perfect comedic timing and innate grace. “Thankfully they’ve kept me around Hollywood long enough to kind of have a second coming, and it’s a lot more fun not to take myself so seriously,” Van Der Beek told Daily Actor in 2012.
Van Der Beek, who was also known for his roles in films including Labor Day, Downsizing, and Varsity Blues (the last of which won him an MTV Movie Award), is survived by wife Kimberly Brook and the couple’s six children.
