{"id":482380,"date":"2026-02-21T18:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T18:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/482380\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T18:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T18:15:08","slug":"did-james-van-der-beek-really-die-broke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/482380\/","title":{"rendered":"Did James Van Der Beek Really Die Broke?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSteven Spielberg wrote a check <\/a>for $25,000. Zoe Salda\u00f1a pledged $2,500 a month. Jon M. Chu gave $10,000, Norman Lear\u2019s widow, Lyn, chipped in $5,000, while a slew of others \u2014 TV writer Julie Plec, talk show host Ricki Lake, model Lydia Hearst \u2014 signed up for thousands more.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn total, the GoFundMe launched <\/a>to help James Van Der Beek<\/a>\u2018s widow and six children so far has collected more than $2.6 million \u2014 tangible, dollar-and-cents proof of how much the Dawson\u2019s Creek star was valued in Hollywood and how genuinely shaken the town was when, on Feb. 11, at just 48, he lost his three-year battle with colorectal cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut, of course, no good deed goes unscrutinized, and those donations have been raising some prickly questions, especially online, where not everyone has been feeling so generous about Van Der Beek\u2019s GoFundMe campaign. Scores of posters have been wondering out loud why the family of such a famous actor \u2014 the star not only of a seminal millennial teen drama that ran on The WB for six seasons but of a string of later TV projects and films\u2014 would require an online fund-raiser.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis doesn\u2019t sit right with me. Not at all,\u201d one skeptic wrote on Threads, piling in on the backlash. \u201cSure, I get it. But thousands of people around the world face this exact situation every day and deal with the struggle. They don\u2019t get $2.5 million. It\u2019s just weird. He had to have had life insurance \u2026 and residual checks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMaybe. But Van Der Beek, for all his widespread name recognition, was not a super-high-net-worth celebrity \u2014 or at least he didn\u2019t spend super conspicuously. He didn\u2019t travel by private jet, bankroll an entourage, collect museum-grade art or own multiple extravagant homes \u2014 or even one, for that matter. Until shortly before his death, he was renting the 36-acre ranch outside Austin, where he moved in 2020 and where he spent his final days among his family and friends, along with a small menagerie of horses, dogs and chickens. Whatever money he made through his decades onscreen \u2014 and from what can be pieced together from interviews and industry realities, it probably wasn\u2019t a huge amount \u2014 got sucked up by the costly business of battling cancer, especially the alternative therapies Van Der Beek was said to have leaned into. By the end, he was reduced to auctioning off<\/a> Dawson\u2019s Creek memorabilia online, like that E.T. toy his character kept in his bedroom (it sold for $6,000).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was a lot of ups and downs these past few years,\u201d a family friend tells THR. \u201cThe last year, he really tried to do everything. After attempting the holistic route, he traveled and tried to get other options. He really wanted to live and had a lot to live for. He fought really, really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe actor with his wife, Kimberly, and their kids (clockwise from top left), Jeremiah, Olivia, Joshua, Emilia, Gwendolyn and Annabel. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of GoFundMe<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tThe role that made Van Der Beek famous \u2014 Dawson Leery, the earnest, Spielberg-worshipping aspiring filmmaker whose romantic idealism and habit of narrating his own life helped drive Dawson\u2019s Creek to hit status when it arrived on the airwaves in 1998 \u2014 did not make him rich. Like most young actors landing their first big TV gig, he was paid peanuts, at least at first.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis was a Kevin Williamson script, and every actor we cast was essentially unknown,\u201d recalls a Warner Bros. source. \u201cKatie Holmes was cast from a home video on her kitchen counter. I can\u2019t imagine James had any points.\u201d Another knowledgeable source believes that Van Der Beek likely started the series at scale, got bumped up to something like $35,000 an episode and in later seasons pocketed closer to $200,000. But residual deals back then were notoriously stingy, particularly for new talent, so when the series ended its run in 2003, there wasn\u2019t a whole lot of ongoing revenue.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was no residual money,\u201d Van Der Beek bluntly told an interviewer in 2014. \u201cI was 20. It was a bad contract.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tVan Der Beek with Katie Holmes on Dawson\u2019s Creek<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Dawson\u2019s Creek, Van Der Beek worked steadily, but not in the sort of long-running, hit vehicles that tend to mint fortunes. He had some memorable turns \u2014 26 episodes of Don\u2019t Trust the B\u2014- in Apartment 23; 31 of CSI: Cyber; eight of Pose \u2014 along with film roles in such movies as Varsity Blues and Rules of Attraction that kept him visible without necessarily delivering Marvel-level paydays. His 2019 turn on Dancing With the Stars might have been a bigger jackpot if he\u2019d made it past the semifinals (reported figures suggest he likely earned about $250,000).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tVan Der Beek with Amy Smart in Varsity Blues.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDeana Newcomb\/Paramount Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tNone of this is to suggest that Van Der Beek was anything like destitute. Yes, there were some IRS issues in the early 2020s (he reportedly owed, and eventually paid, an overdue balance of $269,000 in taxes). But he was a working, in-demand actor who, just five years ago, was pulling in good money on the Disney Junior animated preschool series Vampirina. Based on industry norms, his paycheck for playing Boris the Vampire on 73 episodes could have been upward of $500,000. Last year, he\u2019d appeared in two episodes of Overcompensating and the teen sports romance Sidelined 2: Intercepted and was cast in a recurring role on Amazon\u2019s upcoming Legally Blonde sequel, Elle.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut raising six kids, even in Austin, is expensive, and the rent on that 36-acre ranch \u2014 which before Van Der Beek\u2019s arrival was sometimes leased out as a wedding venue \u2014 wasn\u2019t cheap either (comparable properties in the area can go from $10,000 to $30,000 a month). Reports that Van Der Beek had purchased the place just before his death for $4.8 million turned out to be only half true. Reps for the actor told People that \u201cJames secured [a] down payment for the Texas ranch for the family with the help of friends through a trust so they could shift from rent to mortgage.\u201d But the rumors that he had that kind of money fired up the online criticism of his GoFundMe page, to the point where Van Der Beek\u2019s friend and fellow actor Mehcad Brooks felt compelled to respond.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou have no idea wtf you\u2019re talking about,\u201d he posted. \u201cYou have no idea the pain they went through. It\u2019s ok to stfu when you can\u2019t know what the fuck you\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne thing it\u2019s safe to say about Van Der Beek\u2019s finances is that even in his leanest year, he was almost certainly earning at least $28,090 \u2014 the minimum acting income required to qualify for SAG\u2019s insurance plan. Those famously generous benefits would\u2019ve covered a large portion\u00a0of his cancer treatments. But, of course, not even the best insurance plans cover alternative medicine \u2014 and a source close to the Van Der Beek family confirms that along with standard medical treatments, he turned to nonstandard ones.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not surprising, given that Van Der Beek\u2019s wife, Kimberly, has long been a champion of alternative medicine. Indeed, her Instagram feed \u2014 which, between adorable photos of her towhead kids cavorting on their ranch offers a hodgepodge of whole-body remedies and interviews with natural-health gurus, along with a smattering of vaccine misinformation and debunked conspiracy theories, like the one about 5G phone signals causing brain cancer \u2014 has turned her into a star in her own right, a wellness influencer with some 280,000 followers.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe couple married in 2010 \u2014 shortly after Van Der Beek\u2019s divorce from his first wife, Party of Five actress Heather McComb \u2014 and settled into a 3,100-square-foot Spanish colonial in Beverly Hills (James designed the poolside daybed himself, according to an Architectural Digest piece). But about six months into COVID, they picked up their kids and decamped from L.A. to the Texas town of Spicewood, population 8,000.<\/p>\n

\n\tTurns out they weren\u2019t the only Angelenos with that idea. Podcaster Joe Rogan, Shazam star Zachary Levi, actress Haylie Duff, comedians Theo Von and Tim Dillon and even for a time Elon Musk \u2014 in the early months of the pandemic, they were all part of a self-styled libertarian expat cluster that turned the Austin outskirts into a \u201cconspirituality\u201d hotbed, a fringe hub where wellness culture and COVID conspiracy rhetoric coexisted in perfect harmony.<\/p>\n

\n\tVan Der Beek\u2019s own attitudes about traditional medicine are difficult to pin down. In 2014, he was comfortable enough with it to partner with AstraZeneca on a flu shot-awareness campaign. And in 2021, after Kimberly suffered a pregnancy loss, he worked with the Red Cross to promote blood donation. Still, at the same time, he was also at ease socializing with outspoken anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. A 2022 Rolling Stone expos\u00e9 on Kimberly\u2019s online wellness brand found Insta posts from a March 2021 gathering in Austin showing her husband alongside anti-mandate champions like Dr. Micah Pittman, the Texas chiropractor who became famous for his outrageous COVID conspiracy memes. It\u2019s perhaps notable that the one and only time Van Der Beek spoke publicly about politics \u2014 at least that can be found online today \u2014 it was during the 2020 presidential campaign when he posted a video calling the Democratic Party\u2019s primaries \u201cundemocratic\u201d and complained that Joe Biden was too old to be president (something George Clooney was also saying at the time, but still).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA GoFundMe page has been set up with the family \u201cfacing an uncertain future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of GoFundMe<\/p>\n

\n\tWhatever Van Der Beek\u2019s ideological bent, it\u2019s understandable he\u2019d want to throw every possible treatment at his cancer, no matter what the cost. Not much is publicly known about which wellness therapies he attempted, but as a rule, these regimes can be pricey. Some intensive holistic specialized clinics \u2014 often overseas \u2014 reportedly charge between $15,000 and $65,000 per stay. Some of the non-FDA-approved \u201ccancer-fighting\u201d dietary supplements, like Poly-MVA, require a small fortune to take, up to $20,000 a year. And all of it is strictly out-of-pocket, no matter how great your guild insurance might be.<\/p>\n

\n\tSomehow, though \u2014 miraculously \u2014 throughout his treatments Van Der Beek remained almost supernaturally upbeat, turning his battle with cancer into what may well have been the most inspiring performance of his career. \u201cWhen I heard the news,\u201d he said during a Today interview, \u201cI was like, \u2018This is going to be the best thing that\u2019s ever happened to me.\u2019 I had this little voice in my head that said, \u2018You\u2019re going to make changes in your life that you would never, ever make if you didn\u2019t have this extreme of a diagnosis, and it\u2019s going to add healthy, happy years to your life.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, tragically, that didn\u2019t turn out to be true. For Van Der Beek, traditional treatment proved no more effective at staving off the inevitable than the alternatives. And while nobody outside his family may ever know exactly how much money he made over the years or how it got spent, the true final accounting isn\u2019t the one in his bank account. It\u2019s not even the tally on that much-debated-about GoFundMe page. It\u2019s the number of friends, colleagues and strangers who decided that his life \u2014 and the people he loved and left behind \u2014 were worth investing in.<\/p>\n

\n\tChris Gardner, Katie Kilkenny and Tony Maglio contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story appeared in the Feb. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steven Spielberg wrote a check for $25,000. Zoe Salda\u00f1a pledged $2,500 a month. Jon M. Chu gave $10,000,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[222322,88,39781],"class_list":{"0":"post-482380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-dawsonu2019s-creek","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-james-van-der-beek"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}