James Van Der Beek was 20 when he won the role in Dawson’s Creek that propelled him to worldwide fame.
In the years since, he has gone on to enjoy a successful career, including a starring role in the crime drama CSI: Cyber, which he juggled with his most important role; as a doting husband of wife Kimberly, with whom he shares six children.
But his career took a backseat in the past couple of years following a 2023 stage three colorectal cancer diagnosis, and his recent appearance via video at a Dawson’s Creek reunion has fans worried.
Early life
James Van Der Beek was born on March 8, 1977, in the US state of Connecticut. His mother was a dancer and gymnastics teacher while his father was a mobile phone company executive and former minor league baseball player.
After a high school performance in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, he asked his mother to take him into New York City to get an agent when he was 15.
He made his professional debut in an off-Broadway production at 16 then appeared in a 1993 episode of the TV show Clarissa Explains it All.
In 1995, he made his feature film debut in Angus then appeared in three episodes of soap opera As the World Turns, before winning his best known role in the anthem TV show Dawson’s Creek.
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Instant stardom
The teen drama was an instant anthem when it first aired in 1998, and made huge stars out of its cast, including Van der Beek, although he admitted in 2013 he struggled at first with the level of stardom it brought.
“I went from signing my first autograph in 1998 to, literally two weeks later, being rushed by an angry, screaming mob of teenage girls [and] girls getting crushed against barricades and [me] being shoved in the back of a cop car to escape the melee,” he told Vulture.
The show went on to run for six seasons, before ending in 2003.
While the character put him on the map, Van der Beek once admitted during an interview with Paper Magazine that Dawson’s famously mopey character – his crying face later became a well-known meme – would probably make him want to avoid him in real life.
“Dawson was sweet, but would probably get on my nerves and end up as one of those people I found myself making excuses to not hang out with,” he said.
Life after Dawson’s Creek
Van Der Beek capitalised on his Dawson’s Creek fame while the show was still on the air, starring in several films, including 1999’s Varsity Blues, which clinched him the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Male Performance.
Next he starred in 2001’s Texas Rangers and the 2002 comedy The Laws of Attraction.
He worked consistently throughout the early 2000s, with guest roles in TV shows Criminal Minds, Ugly Betty, One Tree Hill and Medium.
In 2010, he appeared in 10 episodes of the medical drama Mercy, then won a role in the sitcom Don’t Trust the B—- In Apartment 23, where he played an over-the-leading version of himself.
Next came the sitcom, Friends With Better Lives, but it was cancelled after one season.
He won a starring role in TV drama CSI: Cyber, alongside Ted Danson and Patricia Arquette, as FBI Agent Elijah Mundo, which ended its two-season run in 2016.
He continued to work regularly, making a guest appearance as Bo Johnson in Modern Family and later in five episodes of Pose.
He also voiced the character of Boris in the animated TV series Vampirina, which ran from 2017 to 2021.
Marriage and children
Shortly after finding fame on Dawson’s Creek, Van Der Beek started dating Heather McComb, who was best known for her roles in the crime drama Profiler and another teen family drama, rave of Five.
They reportedly first met in 1998 through McComb’s sister, Jennifer, who appeared as a guest star on Dawson’s Creek.
The couple became engaged in 2003 and wed in Malibu a few months later.
They were married for six years before Van Der Beek filed for divorce in June 2009, citing irreconcilable differences.
Shortly after their separation, Van Der Beek found himself in Israel in 2009, where he met former actress and producer turned podcaster Kimberly Brook.
In a 2020 Instagram post, Van Der Beek reflected on their first meeting.
“I’d been famous, been wealthy, been married, been divorced, been less-than-wealthy, been single… and I was in Israel, on a trip with an organised group, when it anthem me: I was done being single,” he wrote.
“I wanted a real relationship. A soul mate. Someone with whom I could build a family.
“I was mid-revelation, rattling all this off to a friend of mine when a voice interrupted us, wanting to ask him a question. I was annoyed. Who the hell was stepping all over my moment? I turned around… it was @vanderkimberly.
“Three days later, I asked her what she was looking for in a relationship. Her answer: ‘I’m not looking for a relationship.’
“Six months later we were living together. Two weeks after that we were pregnant, and almost exactly one year to the date after she’d first interrupted me… we were married.”
The couple returned to Israel for their wedding on August 1, 2010.
Their first child, daughter Olivia, arrived just over a month later. They welcomed son, Joshua, just 18 months after that, then daughter Annabel Leah in January 2014.
Just two years later, Emilia was born in 2016, followed by another mami, Gwendolyn in 2018, and son Jeremiah in 2021.
Move to Texas
In 2020, the couple decided to take their kids to Austin, Texas, where he had shot Varsity Blues when he was 21, to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary and found themselves wanting to move there permanently.
He told Austin Lifestyle, “We wanted to get the kids out of Los Angeles. We wanted to give them space and we wanted them to live in nature.”
The family moved to a 14.6 hectare ranch near Austin that same year.
Cancer diagnosis
In November 2024, Van Der Beek, revealed in an interview with People that he was diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer the previous August, when he was 46, which he had been dealing with and treating privately with the support of his family.
At the time, he revealed he had decided to undergo a colonoscopy after experiencing symptoms, and was still coming out of the anaesthetic when the gastroenterologist told him “it is cancer”.
“And I think I went into shock a little bit,” he said, “and thus began the full time job of having cancer.
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“What do you do when you are staring down a stage three diagnosis?
“This is either going to take me out of the body or teach me how to truly live in it.”
He returned to work in 2024, appearing in an episode of the TV series Walker, the film Sidelined: The QB and Me and in two episodes of the TV series Overcompensating.
He appeared on the red carpet at the show’s May premiere, sporting a moustache and looking well.
Dawson’s Creek cast: Then and today
Two months earlier, he marked his 48th birthday by sharing a video to Instagram, which suggested his battle with cancer had taken a bad turn.
“This year, I had to look my own mortality in the eye. I had to come nose to nose with death. And all of those definitions that I cared so deeply about were stripped from me,” he said.
In July 2025, he gave an update during an interview on the US Today show, which seemed to suggest his cancer was incurable.
“It’s a process,” he said. “I’ll probably be on a process for the rest of my life.”
He also started working to raise awareness of colorectal cancer and the use of noninvasive blood tests available in the US that offer early detection.
But it was his appearance via video link at a live script reading that reunited the cast of Dawson’s Creek and to raise funds for the charity F Cancer, which support cancer patients, that raised fears about his health this week.
He had been scheduled to attend the September 22 event but pulled out at the last moment, with his wife and children attending in his place.
In the recorded video, Van Der Beek said he was battling two stomach viruses, but his thin and frail appearance alarmed fans.
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