Seventeen Magazine, by Sarah Goldsmith
February 1999
Backstage Pass: Dawson's Peak
James Van Der Beek gets serious about fame and his fans - but keeps his valentine a secret. James Van Der Beek doesn't like small talk. when a group touring the Dawson's Creek lot spots his tousled dirty-blond locks and queues up for autographs, he graciously signs the back of some of the brochures they're carrying. He smiles but doesn't say one word. A woman wheeling a toddler in a stroller squawks, "Look! Look! It's Dawson!" The toddler stares blankly as Van Der Beek signs the woman's brochure.
"I'm not all that out-going in those situations," says Van Der Beek after his flock of fans disappears. "I'm really not. I'm meeting strangers who think they know me because they know the character I portray on TV. I sometimes feel like saying, 'My name is not Dawson.'"
Life has changed dramatically for the 21-year-old Cheshire, Connecticut, native since Dawson's Creek premiered last year. "I mean, two years ago I was in college, and now I have this job and everything's different. It's hard to try to wrap your mind around it." His innocent mug and I'm-just-a-regular-guy smile have graced several magazine covers. AJ. Crew catalog photo shoot with fellow DC cast members brought him even more exposure. The shy guy's time in the limelight may just be beginning- this month Van Der Beek stars in the football flick Varsity Blues (see "Van Der Beek Scores a Hollywood Touchdown"). Is it all really too much for him? Probably not. Van Der Beek, who tools around Wiliomgton, North Caroline, in a green-gray Toyota 4Runner, readily acknowledges the rewards of fame. "I get to do what I've always wanted to do."
He wanted to act as early as age 13, when he started doing plays after sustaining a football injury. He spent three years cutting his teeth on community theater stages before landing a role off-Broadway in Edward Albee's Finding the Sun. It was a great gig, but Van Der Beek's theatrical moonlighting made him feel like anoutsider at the private high school he attended (on full scholarship). "I never dated at all. I had like one friend. I guess [the other students] had different priorities. I was doing a play, so I thought I was growing up really fast."
His social ilfe went through the roof at New Jersey's Drew University, where, he says, he "learned to regress." With all the partying he was doing, the English major had to wing it when term papers were due- and he still got good grades. "I wrote papers on books I never read," Van Der Beek says. "How'd I get away with it? Basically, I'm just a really good bull-shitter. I've found that people who actually read the [assigned] book end up writing something that the professor has already read a million times. Someone who hasn't read the book has to get really creative and turn in something the professor has never seen, so you get a better grade."
Snowing his English professors at Drew may have been a cinch, but Van Der Beek takes his TV job very seriously- to the exclusion of any playtime. "I work just about every day, so to be constantly joking around and all that, I don't think it's appropriate." He doesn't even flirt with his costars. Katie Holes (Joey), who has shared steamy on-screen kisses with him, says, "He's kind of quiet, very conservative but very sweet. We're like brother and sister. There's no romance."
Love is one topic Van Der Beek will not discuss. He doew have a girlfriend, but he won't reveal her name. (She gave him the St. Christopher medal he's wearing on page 94. "She worries about me," he explains.) "I'm not about to talk about what's romantic in my life," he says. Don't expect him to get mushy about Valentine's Day, either; to him, it's just "a great excuse to give people gifts." And as for fashion, he's not into it. "I have no taste for that. My style is, um, comfortable, casual," he says.
If you want to see Van Der Beek let down his guard, you have to wait until quitting time on the set of Dawson's Creek, when he hits some of the bars in town with the cast. He's been known to grab the microphone and belt out some James Taylor tunes. "The locals in Wilmington are probably sick of me getting up and singing," he says with a smile."
