His film credits include Varsity Blues (1998), Texas Rangers (2001), The Rules of Attraction (2002), Formosa Betrayed (2009), Labor Day (2013), and Bad Hair (2020).

[5][6] Van Der Beek played the role of Reuben in his middle school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

He made his professional debut off-Broadway at age 16 in 1993 in the New York premiere of Edward Albee's play Finding the Sun with the Signature Theatre Company.

He attended Drew University on an academic scholarship, where he participated in an all-male a cappella group,[9] but dropped out once Dawson's Creek was picked up to series.

Van Der Beek won the title role of Dawson Leery, and the show's 1998 debut was a success that helped to establish the network and its cast.

In 2007, he guest-starred in a two-part episode of the series Criminal Minds, playing a serial killer with dissociative identity disorder called Tobias Hankel who kidnaps and drugs one of the main characters, Spencer Reid.

[citation needed] In 2008, he began a recurring role on One Tree Hill as a filmmaker who was largely the satirical opposite of Dawson Leery.

In 2009, he portrayed real life kidnapper Anthony Steven "Tony Zappa" Wright in the Lifetime network television film Taken In Broad Daylight.

The show debuted to critical praise, with Van Der Beek earning particularly good notices for his comic timing and sendup of his own image.

[19] He made a cameo in the film Downsizing (2017), starring Matt Damon, and voices Boris Hauntley in the Disney Junior show Vampirina.

A surprisingly good dancer,[28] Van Der Beek was consistently scored in the top spot and favored to win until he was eliminated in the semi-finals, finishing in fifth place.

[34] Van Der Beek married business consultant Kimberly Brook on August 1, 2010, in a small ceremony at the Kabbalah Center near Dizengoff Plaza in Tel Aviv, Israel.