James Van Der Beek, the American actor best known for playing Dawson Leery in the television drama Dawson's Creek, has died at the age of 48 after suffering from cancer. For a generation of young viewers in the 1990s, he provided the role model of a sensitive male teenager.
Van Der Beek starred as the fresh-faced Dawson Leery in the series, which aired from 1998 to 2003 and was shown in the UK on Channel 4 and later Channel 5. The show portrayed friendship, first love and the trials of adolescence in the fictional coastal town of Capeside, Massachusetts. The nerdy Dawson's idealism and habit of over-analysing often gave him unrealistic expectations and a tendency to make long emotional speeches.
Van Der Beek was 20 and studying at college in New Jersey when he landed the role of the 15-year-old high-school student. The programme brought worldwide fame to Van Der Beek, as well as to co-stars Katie Holmes, Michelle Williams and Joshua Jackson. Gaining heart-throb status, he needed police escorts and was once asked to leave a shopping mall when besieged by teenage girls.
His film roles included a rebellious high-school football player in Varsity Blues (1999) and a promiscuous, drug-dealing student in The Rules of Attraction (2002). He also played himself in the comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001). Later TV roles included an aspiring rock star in Ugly Betty and a fictionalised version of himself in Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23.
