His audition for the starring role of virginal 15-year-old Dawson Leery in Dawson's Creek was a real pain. As an English major at Drew University in New Jersey, Van Der Beek had to miss school so he could trek into the city (New York, that is) in the middle of the day.

And when they wanted to fly him out to L.A. for a screen test, he actually questioned their decision. "I'm 20 years old," he said. And then he read the full script. "I thought, Oooh, I really want to do this. I hope I didn't just talk myself out of the job."

Not to worry. Within three days, Van Der Beek landed the role. It may be to his credit that Dawson is 15 going on 40. "I like the fact that all the characters are honest, yet flawed in some ways. I mean, the dialogue is great, but even more than that, what's going on underneath it is really incredible," he says.

What's going on in Van Der Beek's own life is even more incredible. Before the show had even premiered on the WB, he had already become a major player in the world of teen heartthrobs, thanks to a marketing campaign that plastered his face on buses, billboards and even the J. Crew catalogue.

Of course, you may have seen Van Der Beek before all this hoopla. He played the bully in Angus and had a limited run in Finding the Sun off-Broadway. More recently, he took on the completely un-Dawson-like indie film Harvest, with Private Parts' Mary McCormack, about a group of farmers who come into hard times and decide to grow marijuana. Talk about being on a major high.

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