Steven Spielbergwrote a checkfor $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, theGoFundMe launchedto helpJames 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 theDawson’s Creekstar was valued in Hollywood and how genuinely shaken the town was when, on Feb. 11, at just 48, helost his three-year battle with colorectal cancer.Related StoriesMoviesJames Van Der Beek Stars as a Twisted Pastor in Trailer for 'The Gates,' One of His Final ProjectsNewsActor 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 toauctioning offDawson’s Creekmemorabilia online, like thatE.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 tellsTHR. “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 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 driveDawson’s Creekto 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 had any points.” Another knowledgeable source believes that Van Der Beek likely started the series at scale, got bumped up to something like $35,000 an episode and in later seasons pocketed closer to $200,000. But residual deals back then were notoriously stingy, particularly for new talent, so when the series ended its run in 2003, there wasn’t a whole lot of ongoing revenue.

“There was no residual money,” Van Der Beek bluntly told an interviewer in 2014. “I was 20. It was a bad contract.”

AfterDawson’s Creek, Van Der Beek worked steadily, but not in the sort of long-running, hit vehicles that tend to mint fortunes. He had some memorable turns — 26 episodes ofDon’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23; 31 ofCSI: Cyber; eight ofPose— along with film roles in such movies asVarsity BluesandRules of Attractionthat kept him visible without necessarily delivering Marvel-level paydays. His 2019 turn onDancing With the Starsmight have been a bigger jackpot if he’d made it past the semifinals (reported figures suggest he likely earned about $250,000).

Source: Drudge Report