JUST IN:Dawson’s Creek’ star James Van Der Beek dies at 48 after colorectal cancer battle

James Van Der Beek, the actor known best for embodying those formative, angsty teenage years in “Dawson’s Creek” and “Varsity Blues,” has died following a diagnosis with colorectal cancer. He was 48.

Van Der Beek’s Feb. 11 death was announced with a post on the actor’s official Instagram page Wednesday. “Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning,” a caption of a photo of the actor read.

“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,” the post, also shared to his wife Kimberly’s Instagram, said. “For now we ask for peaceful privacy as we grieve our loving husband, father, son, brother, and friend.”

A representative for the actor confirmed the news to USA TODAY and shared an official GoFundMe for the family.

The actor was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer in August 2023 and shared his illness with the public in November 2024. He continued working, in spite of his health battle, appearing on shows like the CW’s “Walker” (2024) and Amazon Prime Video’s comedy “Overcompensating” (2025).

Van Der Beek also competed against fellow disguised celebrities on Fox’s “The Masked Singer” (2025) and signed on to Amazon Prime’s forthcoming “Legally Blonde” prequel “Elle” as Dean Wilson, a school district superintendent and mayoral candidate. He also remained active on social media, posting just two weeks before his death to celebrate the joint birthday of his father and one of his daughters.

In this crazy world, it’s a wonder to me that you’ve managed to stay so open, so tender, and so genuinely good,” he wrote. “You are marvels… and I’m so insanely grateful to have you in my life.”

He previously shared with USA TODAY that his diagnosis reinvigorated his love for his chosen profession.

“For a minute, I thought, ‘You know what? I don’t need acting. I don’t need it in the way that I did before,'” he said, during an interview in the summer of 2025. “I’m very, very happy just doing this here with my family. And then, when I got cancer, I realized I love to tell stories. Acting is actually a real passion. Writing is a real passion, and I need to feed that. So, I joke that I’m the only guy I know who got cancer and realized I need to work more.”

Van Der Beek is survived by his wife, Kimberly, whom he wed in 2010, and their six children.

The Cheshire, Connecticut-native, born March 8, 1977, was “a very shy kid,” he told “Good Morning America” in 2020. “I never wanted to be an actor when I was a kid. I wanted to be an athlete.”

But in his early teens, Van Der Beek told the outlet, “I really fell in love with acting. … The only place I felt comfortable being the center of attention was on stage.”

And soon he found confidence in front of a camera, too. After appearing in an episode of Nickelodeon’s “Clarissa Explains It All” in 1993, Van Der Beek booked his first feature, “Angus” (1995), in which his character bullied an overweight teen. That year, he also had a three-episode stint on the CBS soap “As the World Turns.”

Van Der Beek’s own world shifted dramatically when he landed the title role on The WB’s “Dawson’s Creek” (1998-2003), portraying the Spielberg-obsessed cinephile Dawson Leery. The beloved teen drama, which followed Dawson and his friends, Joey Potter (Katie Holmes), Pacey Witter (Joshua Jackson) and Jen Lindley (Michelle Williams) ran for six seasons.

When Entertainment Weekly reunited the cast in 2018 to mark the series’ 20th reunion, Van Der Beek revealed, “There was so much about Dawson that annoyed me. I love that he was sensitive, I love that he was very open and not trying to be a jock. So I love the vulnerability there, that was something I was kind of happy to be putting out. But the rest of it I found kind of annoying, to be honest with you.”

But he and his costars “had a lot of fun doing it,” the actor said. “We all gave it our all, which is why it was so exhausting to go through. I don’t think any of us even knew how to phone it in, even if we decided we wanted to.”

Van Der Beek was also immortalized in the pop culture-consciousness as a teen thanks to his film “Varsity Blues” (1999). The star portrayed lead, Mox, a second-string quarterback called up after the team’s starting QB (Paul Walker) is injured. Mox longs to leave the football-obsessed (and fictitious) town of West Canaan, Texas, for an Ivy League education at Brown University. But first he has to stand up to his demanding football coach (Jon Voight) and father (Thomas F. Duffy), to whom he memorably declared, “I don’t want your life.”

But his life encompassed more than just his time on screen. After filing for divorce from his first wife, actress Heather McComb, in 2009, Van Der Beek crossed paths with Kimberly Brook in Israel. Van Der Beek recounted their first meeting in a 2020 Instagram post celebrating the couple’s 10th wedding anniversary.

Traveling with friends in Israel, Van Der Beek decided, “I was done being single. I wanted a real relationship. A soul mate. Someone with whom I could build a family,” he posted on the social media site. “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 [Kimberly]. 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 would welcome Olivia in 2010, Joshua in 2012, Annabel in 2014, Emilia in 2016, Gwendolyn in 2018 and Jeremiah in 2021.