James Van Der Beek was only 15 years old when he rose to fame as the titular heartthrob on the romantic teen drama “Dawson’s Creek.” He later played memorable roles like Mox, a conflicted and idealistic second-string quarterback in the sports drama “Varsity Blues,” and a fictionalized version of himself in the sitcom “Don’t Trust the B — in Apartment 23.”
The reality in his adult years, though, was that Hollywood no longer came knocking with the same urgency. He instead seemed to relish the role of family man and proud father of six, openly letting fans into his home life and becoming a “dadfluencer” of sorts.
If you didn’t already know that Van Der Beek, who died on Wednesday at the age of 48 a little more than a year after announcing he had colorectal cancer, was a Xennial legend, you might not even catch that from a scroll through his profiles. They are far more family photo album than famous actor. In his bios across social media, he simply called himself some variation of “husband, father, writer, professional make-believer, work in progress.”
On Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, he shared humorous and touching photos and videos with his three million or so followers — whether it be birthday wishes to his brood; happy anniversary posts to his wife, Kimberly; snippets of his family’s outdoor adventures; or, recently, of his youngest uncontrollably giggling as Van Der Beek made silly faces while wearing broken reading glasses.
These posts, which regularly drew hundreds if not thousands of comments, were usually accompanied by lengthy and bighearted missives that often read like personal letters written directly to his loved ones.
When his daughter Olivia turned 15 in September, he shared a video of her in a theatrical production.
“My oldest turned 15 today, same age that Dawson was in the pilot,” he started before sharing a memory of them attending her first high school football game together. “Keep taking big swings, kiddo. Risk imperfection. Keep dreaming big and most importantly, be true to who you are.”
Last Father’s Day, he posted a series of family portraits that showed him and his children beaming and laughing in a grassy field. “Being a father has been the most treasured honor of my life,” he wrote in the caption. “Thank you to my kids for re-teaching me how to live, laugh, love, and show up in my own life and in the world.”
A pinned post on TikTok, from 2022, starts with a selfie video of him walking on a trail with a tot on his back and his older children trailing behind before cutting away to photos from his youth, including stills from his “Dawson’s Creek” and “Varsity Blues” days, with Wheatus’s Y2K anthem “Teenage Dirtbag” playing in the background.
Speaking with Good Morning America in 2023, he called fatherhood “the craziest thing I’ve ever done, and it’s the thing that’s made me happiest.”
“You go for that shift from putting yourself first to other people — these little tiny humans that you love so much — being your first priority,” he said. “Then what you genuinely want is to take care of them, to make them feel safe, to keep them safe, to connect with them and feel that joy. Your life becomes shared, and your joys become shared joys in a really beautiful way.”
On Jan. 25, in the last post before his death, he shared two photos: one of him hugging his daughter Annabel and another of his father hugging her. “My father and my daughter share a birthday today,” he wrote. “At first, I thought that was all they shared — they seemed so different to me. But as the two of you have evolved, and let more of who you are shine through, I can recognize the same open, warm, loving, gentle heart.”
Maya Salam is an editor and reporter, focusing primarily on pop culture across genres.
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