James Van Der Beek Biography & Movies

James Van Der Beek emerged as one of the ultimate teen pin-ups of the late 1990s, all thanks to the title role of Dawson Leary on the WB Network's Dawson's Creek. Born to a cell phone salesman father and a mother who ran a gymnastics studio, James was raised in Cheshire, Connecticut. The oldest of three children, he was an honors student and excelled at football until an injury at 13 sidelined his budding career. In its own way, the injury proved to be serendipitous, as it led James to take up... See All