INTERVIEWS

JAMES VAN DER BEEK

James Van Der Beek Speaks! Dolly Magazine (Australia) November 2000 Issue #361

HE DOESN'T LIKE INTERVIEWS - SO HE ASKED HIMSELF THE QUESTIONS

We know, we know - TV'S a bore without Dawson's Creek. But don't think the break has put James Van Der Beek out of the spotlight. He's recently wrapped up the western flick Texas Rangers with Rachael Leigh Cook and Ashton Kutcher, due out next May, and has just been signed to star in a new film with Selma Flair. Plus his schedule lately has been packed with endless interviews - like this one! But this time around he's taking the lead. Here is James Van Der Beek - 100% himself, about him, by him and, at his request, with his writer's fee being donated to UNICEF.

I don't like doing interviews. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to have fans who might care to read them, but I always feel like I'm on trail when I do them. Interviews are conducted under the auspices of a "casual" conversation. Casual, of course, except for the fact that every word out of your mouth is recorded, polished and packaged for national consumption. Every mindful of this, I end up editing my sentences before they've completely formed in my head, terrifed that, if the raw truth escaped my lips, i'd end up in the wrong context, oversimplified to a degree my fans will find insulting. It's not fun. Now, truth be told, no interview I've done has turned out as badly as I'd feared, but this faisl to ease my paranoia. So, when it came time to promote to my new movie, Texas Rangers, I asked if I could write the article myself. They were cool enough to say yes.

Are you like Dawson in real life?
Dawson reminds me of myself at 15. I was that much of a romantic, that optimistic and, at times, that daunted by my own fears and insecurities. But whereas Dawson tends to wear all of this on his sleeve, I kept them to myself. And although I'll always remember what it felt like to have my heart broken at age 16, I'm now 23. You grow up a lot in seven years, which is why I tend to correct people when they fail to observe the distinction.
"Hey, are you DAWSON?"
"I'm James, and I happen to play a character named..."
"I know, but I call you Dawson."
"But that's not my name."
It's an impossible battle, I know, but one that I fight anyway. It was no accident that, during my first break from Dawson's Creek, I cut off my hair, died it black, put on 15 pounds of muscle, learned a Texas accent and played a quarterback.

Are you going to get with Joey?
I don't know. It's rare for our writing staff to have season-long plot breakdowns, and even when they do, they don't tell us.

If it were up to you, what would happen between them?
Because I see them as characters, I just want whatever is the most dramatic, whatever is the most interesting to play. If they got together, it could get very boring quickly, but who knows...

Can you hook me up with Katie Holmes or Michelle Williams?
I often wonder what people think I'm going to say when they ask me this. "Sure, here's her phone number.." Both girls are like my little sisters, so I have trouble identifying with the frat boy with the backwards baseball cap who shouts at me, "Yo.. that Joey's a hottie."

What's your next movie about?
Texas Rangers takes place in 1875, around the Texas/Mexico border. I play a character from the east coast of America, who, having been marooned in the middle of nowhere and left with nothing, decide to dedicate his life to the prevention of injustice. It was exactly what I wanted to do on my vacation, and I hope it will turn out as well as it could.

Had you ever ridden a horse before?
No, I had to learn it all - ride, rope, shoot, spin my gun - very quickly. I, unlike some of the cast, have the distinction of never having fallen off my horse, although this was not due to a lack of effort on the horse's part to throw me to the ground!

What's it like to be a famous actor?
This question was posed to me on afternoon in the parking lot of Target as I was unloading some find household items into the disastrously messy cargo bay of my beat-up old truck. And it took my by surprise. Did I really like a "famous actor" to her? It sounded so strange.
I mean, I am actor, and I guess I have acquired a certain amount of fame, but it didn't make sense that she thought waking up in the morning was any different for me than it was for her. Basically, I told her I was just a young adult lucky enough to have landed my dream job right out of college. Granted, I'm overpaid, but aside from that, I'm just a kid with a great job.

Do you like getting recognised?
I'm shy around people I don't know, so I'm uncomfortable when complete strangers approach me and say, "Yo, Dawson, sign this!" or "Why didn't you go for that chick in the whipped cream bikini?" I've never needed to be the centre of attention, so I'm not a huge fun of seeing pointed fingers and hastily averted glances every time I turn around. This, of course, comes with the territory of being this fortunate, but it's not my favourite part.

But don't you love signing autographs?
If I can put a smile on someone's face by signing a piece of paper, I'm more than happy to dit - as long as they're polite. Thankfully, most of my fans are. I don't sign for people who follow me home or stake out my front door because they scare me, and I have to say no in crowded areas where I'd run the risk of getting bumrushed if I stopped to sign "just this one". I always feel bad in those situations, but if I sign one autograph I have to sign them all. Most people seem to be very understanding.

Do you have a girlfriend?
Yes I do. And that's all I ever say, because there's no benefit to talking about it publicly. The more you talk about it, the more people ask you about it, and frankly, I'm not really comfortable discussing my love life or talking about my girlfriend with people I don't know. It's a very private matter.

If you weren't an actor, what do you think you'd be doing?
As a kid, I always dreamt of playing professional football or baseball, but had I not gotten so lucky in my present vocation, I probably would have been a middle school English teacher, so I could do for miserable 14-year-olds what my mentor Mr Wyllie did for me - make them feel valuable for being different and unique.

How do you become an actor?
First, a warning. I'm not being falsely modest when I say I'm lucky. If you can picture yourself doing anything else happily, do that. Acting is a very unstable occupation, and no matter how talented you are, it's still, to a large degree, a game of chance. But if this is what you were put on the earth to do, you're in for quite a ride.
I started doing community theatre when I was about 12. I took my first and only theatre class my freshman year of high school, with a woman who came highly recommended by the "theatre crowd". Her parting advice to me was, "James, what you do might get you by in community theatre musicals, but as soon as you try to do anything by a real playwright - O'Neill, Albee, Williams - you just won't be able to cut it." I've since heard that being told you'll never make it is an unofficial perquisite in this industry, but at the time I was crushed. Fortunately, I was also angry.
A year later, I told my mother I thought I could be a professional actor. She believed me. We travelled three hours from Cheshire, Connecticut, to New York City to get an agent, and then home the same day. I made this trip about three times a week for a year and a half, auditioning for everything from educational videos to Corn Pops commercials, without getting a single job. It occurred to me more than once that that drama teacher might have been right.
Then, at age 16, I got a month-long Off-Broadway play written and directed by (get ready for irony!) three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Albee - the very same Mr Albee whose plays I supposedly could not handle. It paid a whopping $40 a month, but believe me, that was the last thing on my mind.
Every day for four months, I slipped out of school just before lunch to get to New York, where I'd spend three hours in heaven - rehearsing, listening and learning. It was my first experience working with with professional actors on stage and it was amazing, but it took every ounce of confidence I had just to get through each day.
Which is why I'm bothering to tell this story - I've never felt ready for any step I've taken in my career. On the first day of almost every job, I've looked around and thought, "How the hell did I get here and how am I going to pull this off?" I thought it then, I thought it when I did my first film two years later, and I thought it when I got the lead in a TV show. My advice to you - an amalgam of wisdom imparted to me by some very kind mentors - is this. Everything you do will be a learning experience. Let fear keep you humble, but don't let it make you defensive. Ask questions. Listen, observe, and take it all into consideration before you take it to heart. Never lose faith in your potential. 
Oh, and that teacher - she had since been fired, but I like to picture that look on her face when she opened up her New York Times one Sunday and read my name praised by the critics. I wonder where she is now....