Rise to Fame
Pacey Witter wasn't the role Joshua Jackson auditioned for. He went in for Dawson, the brooding lead, and creator Kevin Williamson redirected him to the wisecracking best friend. That redirection built a career. Dawson's Creek ran six seasons starting in 1998, but Pacey was the one fans actually tracked. They started calling it 'Pacey's Creek.' When the show ended, he went to London to do David Mamet with Patrick Stewart, came back with something to prove, and landed Fringe in 2008. Five seasons, a cult following, and a career that quietly outran everyone cast above him.
In the Spotlight
The tabloid version of Joshua Jackson focuses on the messy parts: a December 2019 marriage to Jodie Turner-Smith, a divorce filed in October 2023, and the 2025 Palisades Fire that burned down the house he grew up in. The career version is more interesting. Dr. Death (2021) put him in real dramatic territory, earning a Critics' Choice nomination for Best Actor in a Limited Series. Doctor Odyssey (2024) proved it wasn't a fluke. Critics who once filed him under 'Pacey from Dawson's Creek' have quietly updated their folders.
Side Notes
His mother, an Irish casting agent from Dublin, took 11-year-old Joshua to a Keebler potato chip commercial audition hoping it would cure his acting ambitions. It didn't. He'd already appeared as an infant in George C. Scott's The Changeling (1980), so he was in the industry before he had a choice. He and Ryan Reynolds went to the same Vancouver high school. During Dawson's Creek production in Wilmington, he pulled a drowning girl out of the water, and his castmates marked the occasion with a commemorative life preserver. The rescue might be more dramatic than anything on his resume.