Dawson Leery

Dawson is a Capeside teenager obsessed with Steven Spielberg and movies, sleeping across the creek from his best friend Joey with an open window between them. He dreams of making films and getting out of his small town, earnest and a little naive about girls, love, and how much is about to change between him and Joey.

Van Der Beek plays Dawson's sincerity so straight-faced that it becomes the show's emotional anchor and occasionally its joke — a teenager who narrates his own life like a movie, unaware how insufferable that can be. The writing lets him be wrong, wounded, and hopeful in the same breath, which is why 'Dawson's face' became shorthand for a whole style of feeling.