James Van Der Beek's Best Joke Was Himself

"Dawson's Creek, for all its soapy plot devices, took the teenage experience seriously, and the show set the tone with its star, James Van Der Beek. As Dawson Leery, aspiring filmmaker and encyclopedia of cinematic knowledge, Van Der Beek was earnest and self-assured, so ready to throw himself into big attachments and big responsibilities that he felt wise beyond his years, as if he'd absorbed extra lived experience through movies and was somehow older than his peers."

"Van Der Beek, who died Wednesday at 48, was not that kind of performer. For a sliver of time in the late '90s and early aughts, he was everywhere - as the face of Dawson's Creek, then cycling through different forms of American young adulthood in football classic Varsity Blues and Bret Easton Ellis's The Rules of Attraction - and then, for many years after that, he played versions of himself."

James Van Der Beek embodied Dawson Leery as an earnest, self-assured aspiring filmmaker who carried a cinematic seriousness that made him seem older than his peers. Dawson's Creek became a cultural phenomenon through its frank teenage themes, with Van Der Beek serving as the show's steady emotional core and iconic image. Fame did not confine him to that single role; he moved through high-profile young-adult films and later embraced playing versions of himself. He was willing to mock and acknowledge his own omnipresence, to poke at his persona and accept pop-culture saturation even at personal expense.

Read at Vulture