Rise to Fame
A football concussion at 13 steered him to theater. That led to Dawson's Creek, where he played a fictionalized version of creator Kevin Williamson, the most earnest character on the most earnest network in primetime. The show premiered January 1998 as The WB's highest-rated launch ever. He could see the typecasting coming: he took Varsity Blues right after the first season, deliberately playing someone meaner and dumber. The film topped the U.S. box office for two weeks and grossed $54 million. Hollywood still filed him under teen idol anyway.
In the Spotlight
Dawson's Creek made careers for Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams and built The WB's brand. Van Der Beek reportedly received little in residuals from it. When he died in February 2026 at 48, his family launched a GoFundMe citing cancer treatment costs; it hit its $500,000 target in four hours and ultimately raised $2.6 million. A journalist's viral post asking why Sony never quietly covered his medical bills drew 4 million views. Sony, which still owns the catalog, never responded.
Side Notes
In Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 (ABC, 2012), he played a pathetic, needy, delusional version of himself, and it was the sharpest work of his career. Critics gave it 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. ABC cancelled it after two seasons due to scheduling problems, not performance. He co-created and starred in What Would Diplo Do? (Viceland, 2017), which the LA Times called 'The Veep of DJ Culture.' Both were smart and underseen, which describes his entire post-Creek career in miniature.
Final Chapter
His final project, the Legally Blonde prequel series Elle on Prime Video, had already wrapped filming in August 2025; Reese Witherspoon paid tribute as executive producer. Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 resurfaced to #3 on Prime Video's top TV shows. Joshua Jackson appeared on the Today show, and Katie Holmes posted a handwritten tribute on Instagram.