About The Show

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About The Show

Much like their Party of Five counterparts before them, the cast members of WB's Dawson's Creek learned that network television is a great place to be young, beautiful, and sexually frank when their series generated a tidal wave of interest among teenage viewers following its January 1998 premiere. Though she came to the show with considerably less professional experience than her castmates, actress Katie Holmes quickly distinguished herself with her tart-tongued delivery and emotional vibrancy. Along with legions of youthful couch potatoes, a slew of Hollywood producers and directors did a double-take, and the doe-eyed, long-legged Holmes filled her first summer hiatus from the daily grind of series television by making three movies.

Rather unlike Joey, her streetwise, semi-orphaned Dawson's Creek alter ego, Holmes grew up in a stable, middle-class household where her supportive parents attentively shepherded her through the earliest stages of her career. The youngest child of five, she was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, and spent her high-school years at an all-girls Catholic academy. The summer following her 17th birthday, a connection with a Toledo modeling agency led the unassuming schoolgirl to a 1996 modeling convention in New York. While there, she was a pproached by a Los Angeles based talent scout who invited her to spend six weeks in Southern California attending auditions. Though her father initially resisted the idea, the pleadings of friends and family members won him over and the would-be actress headed for Hollywood, with her mother as chaperone.

Many an aspiring thespian has answered dozens of casting calls before landing that first substantial role, but the blithely inexperienced Holmes was snatched up on her first try, an audition for director Ang Lee's The Ice Storm. After spending half the day in line with a horde of other hopefuls, she finally had her chance to read lines in front of a video camera. Almost immediately, the inexperienced young actress was offered a role as T obey Maguire's wealthy uptown girlfriend. Talk about your charmed lives. Though she quickly set to learning the ropes, Holmes was so thoroughly green when she arrived on the set that when Lee invited her to his trailer midway through her first day on the set, she thought he had decided to fire her. In reality, the director just wanted to have a harmless discussion of her role in the movie.

After filming wrapped, Holmes returned to Ohio in order to finish high school. Her newfound interest in acting continued to bloom even away from the fertile soil of a movie set, and the following summer found her vamping it up as Lola in a local production of Damn Yankees. With an ear tuned to the Hollywood casting grapevine, Holmes got wind of the casting call for Scream scribe Kevin Williamson's debut television series, Dawson's Creek, and decided to take a shot at one of the available roles. With her mother's help, she prepared a videotaped screen test in the family's rec room and mailed it to Warner Bros. A solicitous Williamson viewed the homemade demo with no great hope of its yielding even a callback—much less a bona fide starlet-in-the-making—and was astonished by what he saw. Williamson asked Holmes to come out to the West Coast for an in-person audition, and she (perhaps a mite naively) explained that she was busy with the community theater production of Damn Yankees, and asked if the meeting could wait until the play finished its run. Fortunately for her career, Williamson decided it could.

When Holmes eventually made it to L.A. for the face-to-face meeting, Williamson and his co-producers knew immediately that she was right for their show, despite the fact that a scant year had passed since her debut and only professional credit in The Ice Storm. Though its premiere ended up getting moved back by several months, Dawson's Creek won critical raves before it ever aired an episode, thanks largely to a widely circulated advance tape of its pilot. The buzz only increased in volume after the show finally made it into WB's hit-starved primetime lineup in a prime spot right after the network's one success story, the ultra-hip Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show's cast of uniquely-perhaps supernaturally-loquacious and candidly horny adolescents quickly became the objects of both teen worship and parental outcry. The teens found much to identify with in the convoluted relationships of Joey, Dawson (James Van Der Beek), Jennifer (Michelle Williams), and Pacey (Joshua Jackson), and perhaps it was the suspicion that the show's long-winded speeches expressed stirrings their own kids felt that riled the parents. Teen-savvy Hollywood producers took note of the cast's popularity and Holmes was in movie theaters as the canny heroine of the teen horror flick Disturbing Behavior mere weeks after Dawson's Creek's first-season finale.

In the coming months, she'll be seen alongside Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr in director Doug (Swingers) Liman's Go, a crime caper that follows the aftermath of a (get this) bungled drug deal; and she'll have a starring role opposite Molly Ringwald and Vivica A. Fox in Williamson's directorial debut, Killing Mrs. Tingle.

While Dawson's Creek is filming, Holmes lives by herself in an apartment in sleepy Wilmington, N.C., which stands in for the show's fictional Capeside, Mass. Off the set she pals around with her castmates and indulges her cravings for Starbucks lattes and Jelly Bellies. She was recently accepted to New York's Columbia University, where she may major in English, but has deferred her enrollment until her acting schedule becomes more settled.


	D.C Katie Holmes \| home Filmography \| Biography \| Characters \| Episode Guide \| --Type Title Here-- \| About The Show \| News & Rumors \| Joey and Dawson Memories \| --Type Title Here-- \| My Links \| Mailbag \| About Me And How To Contact Me \| Ash D \| --Type Title Here-- \| --Type Title Here-- About The Show Much like their Party of Five counterparts before them, the cast members of WB's Dawson's Creek learned that network television is a great place to be young, beautiful, and sexually frank when their series generated a tidal wave of interest among teenage viewers following its January 1998 premiere. Though she came to the show with considerably less professional experience than her castmates, actress Katie Holmes quickly distinguished herself with her tart-tongued delivery and emotional vibrancy. Along with legions of youthful couch potatoes, a slew of Hollywood producers and directors did a double-take, and the doe-eyed, long-legged Holmes filled her first summer hiatus from the daily grind of series television by making three movies. Rather unlike Joey, her streetwise, semi-orphaned Dawson's Creek alter ego, Holmes grew up in a stable, middle-class household where her supportive parents attentively shepherded her through the earliest stages of her career. The youngest child of five, she was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, and spent her high-school years at an all-girls Catholic academy. The summer following her 17th birthday, a connection with a Toledo modeling agency led the unassuming schoolgirl to a 1996 modeling convention in New York. While there, she was a pproached by a Los Angeles based talent scout who invited her to spend six weeks in Southern California attending auditions. Though her father initially resisted the idea, the pleadings of friends and family members won him over and the would-be actress headed for Hollywood, with her mother as chaperone. Many an aspiring thespian has answered dozens of casting calls before landing that first substantial role, but the blithely inexperienced Holmes was snatched up on her first try, an audition for director Ang Lee's The Ice Storm. After spending half the day in line with a horde of other hopefuls, she finally had her chance to read lines in front of a video camera. Almost immediately, the inexperienced young actress was offered a role as T obey Maguire's wealthy uptown girlfriend. Talk about your charmed lives. Though she quickly set to learning the ropes, Holmes was so thoroughly green when she arrived on the set that when Lee invited her to his trailer midway through her first day on the set, she thought he had decided to fire her. In reality, the director just wanted to have a harmless discussion of her role in the movie. After filming wrapped, Holmes returned to Ohio in order to finish high school. Her newfound interest in acting continued to bloom even away from the fertile soil of a movie set, and the following summer found her vamping it up as Lola in a local production of Damn Yankees. With an ear tuned to the Hollywood casting grapevine, Holmes got wind of the casting call for Scream scribe Kevin Williamson's debut television series, Dawson's Creek, and decided to take a shot at one of the available roles. With her mother's help, she prepared a videotaped screen test in the family's rec room and mailed it to Warner Bros. A solicitous Williamson viewed the homemade demo with no great hope of its yielding even a callback—much less a bona fide starlet-in-the-making—and was astonished by what he saw. Williamson asked Holmes to come out to the West Coast for an in-person audition, and she (perhaps a mite naively) explained that she was busy with the community theater production of Damn Yankees, and asked if the meeting could wait until the play finished its run. Fortunately for her career, Williamson decided it could. When Holmes eventually made it to L.A. for the face-to-face meeting, Williamson and his co-producers knew immediately that she was right for their show, despite the fact that a scant year had passed since her debut and only professional credit in The Ice Storm. Though its premiere ended up getting moved back by several months, Dawson's Creek won critical raves before it ever aired an episode, thanks largely to a widely circulated advance tape of its pilot. The buzz only increased in volume after the show finally made it into WB's hit-starved primetime lineup in a prime spot right after the network's one success story, the ultra-hip Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show's cast of uniquely-perhaps supernaturally-loquacious and candidly horny adolescents quickly became the objects of both teen worship and parental outcry. The teens found much to identify with in the convoluted relationships of Joey, Dawson (James Van Der Beek), Jennifer (Michelle Williams), and Pacey (Joshua Jackson), and perhaps it was the suspicion that the show's long-winded speeches expressed stirrings their own kids felt that riled the parents. Teen-savvy Hollywood producers took note of the cast's popularity and Holmes was in movie theaters as the canny heroine of the teen horror flick Disturbing Behavior mere weeks after Dawson's Creek's first-season finale. In the coming months, she'll be seen alongside Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr in director Doug (Swingers) Liman's Go, a crime caper that follows the aftermath of a (get this) bungled drug deal; and she'll have a starring role opposite Molly Ringwald and Vivica A. Fox in Williamson's directorial debut, Killing Mrs. Tingle. While Dawson's Creek is filming, Holmes lives by herself in an apartment in sleepy Wilmington, N.C., which stands in for the show's fictional Capeside, Mass. Off the set she pals around with her castmates and indulges her cravings for Starbucks lattes and Jelly Bellies. She was recently accepted to New York's Columbia University, where she may major in English, but has deferred her enrollment until her acting schedule becomes more settled.