Joshua Jackson doesn’t miss his 20s. In fact, he “really enjoys the process of aging.”
“I like where I’m at now,” the actor tells me over Zoom, even leaning in to show off the gray hair creeping into his beard. “I had a lot of fun and good times in my life, but you could not drag me back to 25. There’s nothing there that I miss that would be better than what I have right now.”
At 47, Jackson says a little hard-earned wisdom has replaced the intensity he remembers from his younger years, including the whirlwind of his Dawson’s Creek days.
“I remember 25 as just — everything being difficult. Everything was hard. Every molehill was a mountain. Everything was too intense. I was too serious,” he says with a laugh. “And I’m really happy where I’m at.”
That shift in outlook is part of what made a recent health campaign resonate.
Jackson has partnered with AstraZeneca to encourage people to take cancer screenings seriously through the Get Body Checked initiative, part of the NHL’s Hockey Fights Cancer program. The message is simple: If you’re old enough to remember watching a baby-faced Jackson in projects like The Mighty Ducks, you’re probably now at the age when preventive screenings matter.
That message hits particularly close to home for Jackson.
“It was James’s diagnosis that really made me think, ‘Oh, shit … I’m here now,’” Jackson says, referring to his Dawson’s Creek costar James Van Der Beek. The actor was a month shy of his 49th birthday when he died Feb. 11 after a years-long battle with colorectal cancer. “This is my age cohort. This isn’t something I need to think about in the future. This is something I need to be proactive about now.”
Below, Jackson shares a few things on his mind — from fatherhood to friendship to the big questions he’s asking himself.
One thing that’s still difficult to process
Earlier on Wednesday, Jackson had appeared on the Today show, where producers played a clip from his Dawson’s Creek days — a reminder of just how young the two actors were when the show first took off.
“I’m always struck by what kids we were,” he says.
But revisiting the show itself is something he hasn’t been able to bring himself to do yet.
“I’ll be honest — I haven’t gone back and watched Dawson’s Creek since he passed away,” Jackson says. “So I don’t know what it would feel like now.”
The two actors shared six years on the series, a time Jackson now describes as both “really intense” and a “very formative moment.”
Still, Jackson is careful to put his own grief in perspective.
“He went on to do more important things with himself,” he says. “And as much as it is painful to think of the pain that his family is suffering right now, I also want to be really respectful of the fact that I lost a colleague, but somebody else lost a dad and a husband.”
Processing the death, he says, has been complicated.
“It’s been a difficult thing to grapple with,” he says, “just how enormous that loss is.”
Michelle Williams, James Van Der Beek, Joshua Jackson and Katie Holmes in 1999 on the Dawson’s Creek set.
(Getty Images via Getty Images)One thing that changed how he thinks about his health
Jackson says the push to take cancer screenings seriously didn’t arrive all at once. It was something that built gradually — through family experiences, watching peers like Van Der Beek face health challenges and the biggest game-changer of all: becoming a dad.
“When my daughter came, you just become really aware of the importance of your living,” Jackson says of his 5-year-old, Juno Rose. “You recognize that you are a necessary part of somebody else’s life now.”
Now that he’s in his late 40s, that can be daunting. But Jackson feels lucky at how far medical knowledge has progressed.
“The difference between what’s available to me and what was available to my mother or available to my grandmother is night and day,” he says. “We have the ability and possibility to really take much better care of ourselves than the generations that came before.”
Part of that, he says, comes down to paying attention to both physical and mental health.
“On the mental health side, I speak to a therapist and just try to find moments of calmness in the day,” he explains. “I’m cognizant of what I put into my body, right? So I probably eat better than — I’m at least more aware of the things that I eat than I was when I was younger. I thankfully grew up in a very physically active place, so I’ve always been a physically active person, but just really recognizing how much better I feel when I move. Whatever that is, just getting the body moving is important.”
One ‘Heated Rivalry’ thing
The cancer awareness campaign also connects to one of Jackson’s lifelong passions: hockey.
The actor, who grew up in Canada and famously played Charlie Conway in The Mighty Ducks, says the sport has always been central to his life — even if it’s suddenly having a broader cultural moment thanks to shows like Heated Rivalry.
“Hockey is always a pop culture moment for me,” he says, but he loves seeing the game reach new audiences. “I’m excited that the game is breaking into the consciousness in this kind of ‘it’s everywhere’ way.”
“We’ve come a long way from The Mighty Ducks to Heated Rivalry,” Jackson smiles. And yes, he has watched the buzzy series.
“It’s not super-easy to shock me at this point in my life,” he says. “But there are definitely moments of that show where I’m like, ‘Holy shit.’ Did not expect that.”
One humbling moment
Jackson may have spent decades as beloved teen heartthrob Pacey Witter, but at home, his résumé doesn’t carry much weight with his toughest critic: his daughter.
“So last year, when Dr. Odyssey first came out, I turned on Disney+ for something for her to watch. And first up comes the tile for Dr. Odyssey. I’m like, ‘Recognize anybody? Like your dad? Do you want to watch?’”
Her answer: no.
A few weeks later, another opportunity presented itself.
“For whatever reason, The Mighty Ducks came up,” Jackson says. “So we’re looking for, I don’t know, Simba’s Pride or whatever we were watching at that time, and up comes The Mighty Ducks. I’m like, ‘You are now age-appropriate. We could if you wanted to.’”
That pitch didn’t land either.
“Absolutely not, Dad,” he recalls her saying.
The verdict was final.
“She’s just totally uninterested,” Jackson says. “Which is a good thing.”
One ‘magical’ reunion
Paparazzi photos recently captured Jackson reuniting with his Dawson’s Creek costar Katie Holmes on the set of the upcoming film Happy Hours. The movie centers on former sweethearts who cross paths years later.
While the two have stayed in touch over the years, Jackson says working with Holmes again felt “magical.” He compares the experience to reconnecting with a friend who defined your college years.
“If whoever you had the most fun with during your college years — when you were crazy and passionate in it — and then you come back after all these years with marriages and kids and career and life, and you have the opportunity to go back and do that favorite college project again,” he says.
For Jackson, the reunion has also offered a chance to see Holmes in a new light.
“As a grown man now, to be able to witness and appreciate my friend not just as an actress but as a director and as a writer and as a producer,” he says. “Katie’s just a super-impressive woman.”