TV's Good Guy Turns Bad

He's a good guy on television, but turns bad for his new film, which opens this weekend.

Actor James Van Der Beek is best know for the six seasons he has played Dawson Leery on the hit WB series "Dawson's Creek". He tells The Early Show he can currently be seen on the big screen as bad boy Sean Bateman in "The Rules Of Attraction".

The film adapts Bret Easton Ellis' humorous and scandalous novel on drug-, alcohol-, and-sex-drenched campus fetes among the young and the privileged at Camden College, a small, affluent liberal arts college somewhere in New England.

Beek's character is an in-debt, ladies man who makes school his last priority.

Facts About James Van Der Beek

• James Van Der Beek Jr. was born in Cheshire, Conn., on March 8, 1977
  
• Beek gave acting a try after a football injury in the eighth grade forced him to the sidelines; he starred as Danny Zuko in a school theater production of "Grease"
  
• Beek attended Drew University in Madison, N.J., but he interrupted studies to pursue his acting career
  
• In 1994, he made his professional stage debut in an Off-Broadway production of Edward Albee's "Finding the Sun"
  
• In 1995, Beek made his film debut as a sadistic bully in "Angus"
  
• He appeared in the little-seen "I Love You, I Love You Not" in 1997
  
• Beek became a familiar face in 1998 when he played amateur filmmaker Dawson Leery in The WB series, "Dawson's Creek"
  
• The actor played a Texas football-playing high school senior in the successful "Varsity Blues" in 1999
  
• In 2001, he co-starred in "Texas Rangers"