James Van Der Beek was born in Cheshire, Connecticut, USA on 1977. His father is Jim Vanderbilt, the head of the mobile phone company. James is the eldest of the three children. James's mother used to be a dancer on Broadway, but now she runs a health club. James Van Der Beek suffered from dyslexia when he was a child, but he achieved excellent academic results through hard work. At the same time, he is a member of the football team. After the injury, the doctor told him not to play football for a year.

It was under this opportunity that Vanderbilt, aged 13, played the role of Danny Zuko in Grease, which was rehearsed by the campus troupe. Since then, he has been out of control and spent the next three years in the community theater. 16 years old, accompanied by his mother, he went to new york, found an agent, and began to participate in possible auditions. The following year and 1994, Vanderbilt starred in off broadway's plays Looking for the Sun and Shenandoah respectively, and then enrolled in Drew University in New Jersey, majoring in English and sociology, during which he joined a men's band named "No.36 Madison Avenue". Vanderbilt won his first big screen role from the youth film Fried Ice Cream in 1995, and the following year he played a walk-on role in Wandering Love starring claire danes. Vanderbilt was a little disappointed with his poor performance prospects, so he put his energy back into his studies and got on the list of outstanding students published by the school. However, his patience with college life did not last long. Finally, he auditioned for the TV series Love Times, and was lucky enough to get the role of Dawson Leery in The First Hero, which changed his life. This drama made James Van Der Beek one of the most sought-after youth idols in the late 1990s, and the chemical reaction between him and the heroine katie holmes on and off the screen was also considered as one of the important factors for the success of this drama.

From 65438 to 0999, Vanderbilt pulled himself out of TV series and made a youth film called varsity blues, which won an excellent box office of $52 million and an MTV film award trophy awarded by Vanderbilt, but at the same time, his slightly exaggerated Texas accent in the film attracted a lot of ridicule. 200 1 made a guest appearance in the movie Scream, which won him the best guest appearance in the MTV film award. In addition, James Van Der Beek also starred in an episode of TV series Still Standing, and Texas Patrol, which plays the leading role in 0 1, is also a popular box office movie. In 2002, he collaborated with shannyn sossamon, Jessica Biel and others on the love thriller The Magnetic Field of Love, which was adapted from the book Bret Easton Ellis.