Did James Van Der Beek Really Die Broke?
February 21, 2026 at 02:30 PM
By Lexy PerezHollywood has rallied behind the late 'Dawson’s Creek' star, raising $2.6 million for his widow and six children. But the internet has been less generous, with scores of posters wondering why such a famous actor would need a fundraiser in the first place.
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Hollywood has rallied behind the late 'Dawson’s Creek' star, raising $2 Hollywood has rallied behind the late 'Dawson’s Creek' star, raising $2.6 million for his widow and six children. But the internet has been less gener Monitor developments in Did for further updates.
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Hollywood has rallied behind the late 'Dawson’s Creek' star, raising $2 6 million for his widow and
Hollywood has rallied behind the late 'Dawson’s Creek' star, raising $2.6 million for his widow and six children. But the internet has been less generous, with scores of posters wondering why such a famous actor would need a fundraiser in the first place.
James Van Der Beek was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer in August of 2023. His attitudes about traditional medicine are difficult to pin down. Courtesy of Guardant Health Home News General News Did James Van Der Beek Really Die Broke? Hollywood has rallied behind the late 'Dawson’s Creek' star, raising $2.6 million for his widow and six children. But the internet has been less generous, with scores of posters wondering why such a famous actor would need a fundraiser in the first place. By Benjamin Svetkey Plus Icon Benjamin Svetkey Articles Editor More Stories by Benjamin How Is ‘Melania’ Playing in Minneapolis? Let’s Crunch the Numbers Melania Trump and Brett Ratner Break Silence on Making Their Controversial $75 Million Doc At Rob Reiner’s Brentwood Home, Shock and Sorrow Crowd Out the Frame View All February 21, 2026 Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Steven Spielberg wrote a check for $25,000. Zoe Saldaña pledged $2,500 a month. Jon M. Chu gave $10,000, Norman Lear’s widow, Lyn, chipped in $5,000, while a slew of others — TV writer Julie Plec, talk show host Ricki Lake, model Lydia Hearst — signed up for thousands more. In total, the GoFundMe launched to help James Van Der Beek‘s widow and six children so far has collected more than $2.6 million — tangible, dollar-and-cents proof of how much the Dawson’s 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. Related Stories Movies James Van Der Beek Stars as a Twisted Pastor in Trailer for 'The Gates,' One of His Final Projects News Actor Mehcad Brooks Defends James Van Der Beek's Family's $2.6M GoFundMe Amid Backlash But, 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’s GoFundMe campaign. Scores of posters have been wondering out loud why the family of such a famous actor — 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— would require an online fund-raiser. “This doesn’t sit right with me. Not at all,” one skeptic wrote on Threads, piling in on the backlash. “Sure, I get it. But thousands of people around the world face this exact situation every day and deal with the struggle. They don’t get $2.5 million. It’s just weird. He had to have had life insurance … and residual checks.” Maybe. But Van Der Beek, for all his widespread name recognition, was not a super-high-net-worth celebrity — or at least he didn’t spend super conspicuously. He didn’t travel by private jet, bankroll an entourage, collect museum-grade art or own multiple extravagant homes — 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 — and from what can be pieced together from interviews and industry realities, it probably wasn’t a huge amount — 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 Dawson’s Creek memorabilia online, like that E.T. toy his character kept in his bedroom (it sold for $6,000). “It was a lot of ups and downs these past few years,” a family friend tells THR. “The 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.” The actor with his wife, Kimberly, and their kids (clockwise from top left), Jeremiah, Olivia, Joshua, Emilia, Gwendolyn and Annabel. Courtesy of GoFundMe *** The role that made Van Der Beek famous — Dawson Leery, the earnest, Spielberg-worshipping aspiring filmmaker whose romantic idealism and habit of narrating his own life helped drive Dawson’s Creek to hit status when it arrived on the airwaves in 1998 — did not make him rich. Like most young actors landing their first big TV gig, he was paid peanuts, at least at first. “This was a Kevin Williamson script, and every actor we cast was essentially unknown,” recalls a Warner Bros. source. “Katie Holmes was cast from a home video on her kitchen counter. I can’t imagine James
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