In Style Magazine, by Laura Jamison
February 1999
First Home: Mail-Order Pride
James Van Der Beek of Dawson's Creek had a simple decorating strategy for his new apartment: catalogues As soon as James Van Der Beek decided to buy the airy one-bed-room loft in Wilmington, North Carolina, the city where his show, Dawson's Creek, is filmed, he turned to his college buddy Chris, who had helped him scout real estate prospects. "OK, man," Van Der Beek told him. "We've gotta go to Circuit City!"
Since those early weeks last spring, when "all I had in here was a big TV and a couch," Van Der Beek's apartment has evolved into a comfortable, unpretentious home that doesn't try to mimic the city's nearby historical district, which is studed with antiques stores. "You can pobably get my whole apartment out of two catalogues," he jokes. "But you'd be impressed if you saw the place before I moved in; it had picled pink floors and pink walls. I spent all my Saturdays at Home Depot. You start saying, 'Yeah, that's what I need- a tool belt!'"
Van Der Beek, 21, is a typical guy's guy- except that he plays the romantic lead in a hit TV series. By now, he must be getting used to this double life. Growing up in suburban Connecticut, where his father was a minor league baseball player and his mother was a dancer, Van Der Beek performed in community theater while playing high school football. "The two worlds don't really coexist well when you're 14 or 15 years old," he says. "I would never pass out flyers to guys on the team, like, 'Hey, guys, I'm doing Godspell. Check it out!'" After he was sidelined by a concussion on the field, Van Der Beek was sidelined by a concussion on the field, Van Der Beek shifted the focus to acting. He got a break when Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee cast the then 16-year-old in his play Finding the Sun- and roles in two movies followed, though neither was a hit. Van Der Beek attended Drew University for a time, but he dropped out after landing the starring role as the sensitive Dawson on Dawson's Creek.
The show's phenomenal success has helped launch the film careers of co-stars Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams, and Van Der Beek hopes to make his mark on the big screen with the première of Varsity Blues, a comedy about the obsessive nature of- what else?- high school football in a small Texas town. Van Der beek plays the reluctant star quarterback Mox, "a character different from Dawson," he says. "He actually drinks and has sex." Besides the satisfying release of playing a less serious character, Van Der Beek got to work with veteran actor Jon Voight. "When someone says, 'When I did Deliverance...' you perk up and listen," says Van Der Beek. "I had a blast."
Mox, says the young actor, is "a football player with the mind of a poet," a description that could easily apply to Van Der Beek himself. THough he says he was "too busy watching The Simpsons" to take an interest in the books he was assigned during his days at Drew, he's now an avid reader whos shelves are filled with classics like the Sound and the Fury, The Crucible and The Catcher in the Rye. He's also a budding writer. "I write a lot of short stories. Some of my college professors urged me to publish, but I never tried," Van Der Beek says. "When people ask me what I do for fun, I'm like, 'Fun?' I usually come home from work, open a beer, and start writing." Where in his new home does he find inspiration? "I'm the same as everyone else in America," he says, laughing. "I do everything on my couch."
The sofa in question is a large, puffy and covered in pale-brown suede. "I grew up in Connecticut, so I ove the fall," he says. "That's why I went with earth tones for my apartment. Plus, they're safe. I didn't want to have to worry about spilling things or putting my feet up on the furniture." Or about any damage done by objects tossed between the living room and the sleeping loft, which is one of the features that sold him on the apartment. "Chris said, 'This is cool.' We were like two college kids." Well, almost.