James Van Der Beek has died at 48. His wife, Kimberly, shared the news on her Instagram.
“Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning,” she wrote alongside a photo of her husband. “He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace. There is much to share regarding his wishes, love for humanity and the sacredness of time. Those days will come. For now we ask for peaceful privacy as we grieve our loving husband, father, son, brother, and friend.”
Van Der Beek learned he had stage 3 colon cancer in 2023, and publicly announced his diagnosis in late 2024.
Van Der Beek previously told Business Insider that the news came as a shock, given the subtleness of his symptoms and his efforts to stay as healthy as possible.
“I was doing everything,” he said. “I was doing sauna, cold plunge, weightlifting, Pilates. I would dance and also do football training.”
Van Der Beek found instant fame when he was cast as the titular teen Dawson Leery in The WB series “Dawson’s Creek.” The show ran for six seasons from 1998 to 2002.
While on the show, Van Der Beek cemented his 1990s stardom by landing the lead role in the 1999 coming-of-age drama “Varsity Blues,” playing Texas high school quarterback “Mox” Moxon.
Van Der Beek worked steadily the rest of his career, starring in the cult indie hit “The Rules of Attraction,” playing a fictional version of himself on the series “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23,” and performing on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2019.
In 2020, Van Der Beek moved with his family from Los Angeles to Texas to focus on raising their children. His wife, Kimberly, gave birth to their sixth child in 2021.
Van Der Beek said he struggled to process the news of his 2023 diagnosis and cope with his new reality.
“All these beautiful things that I love, and I used to define myself as — a father, a provider, a husband — all that got taken away, or at least paused,” he previously told Business Insider. “I had to sit there and say, ‘Well, what am I?’ And it was, ‘I’m still worthy of love.'”
To support Van Der Beek, his former “Dawson’s Creek” castmates — including Michelle Williams, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, and Busy Philipps — organized a one-night-only live reading of the show’s pilot episode in 2025. Held in New York City, the event raised money for F Cancer, a nonprofit focused on early screening and cancer prevention.
Originally scheduled to perform, Van Der Beek announced that he had two stomach viruses and said he was disappointed he couldn’t attend. Lin-Manuel Miranda took on the role of Dawson instead.
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