TO BE A FOOTBALL HERO; `DAWSON'S CREEK' STAR VAN DER BEEK MAKES FIRST-STRING WITH `VARSITY BLUES'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

TV's latest youth deity, ``Dawson's Creek'' star James Van Der Beek, probably didn't need to spend his summer hiatus getting his brains beaten out by the best young football players in Texas.

But don't tell him that. The 21-year-old actor is not only proud of his first movie starring role as a reluctant small-town gridiron hero in ``Varsity Blues.''He's also convinced that it was necessary for him to play the demanding, punishing part - at least if he hopes to sustain his acting career after the hot hormonal appeal of Dawson Leery inevitably cools off. (The show airs 9 p.m. Wednesdays on L.A.'s WB outlet, KTLA Channel 5.)

Then there's the fact that a high school quarterback - even an unusually literate, conflicted one like ``Varsity's'' Jonathan Moxon - has got to have more gumption in him than Van Der Beek's talkative but painfully hesitant TV teen.

``It was a conscious choice - for my own sanity - to play somebody different from Dawson, somebody who's not paralyzed by his own fears and insecurities,'' says the thoughtful, low-key Van Der Beek. ``Also, as an actor, I knew I had to try something that was really different.

``And, you know, there was risk involved,'' the blond, Connecticut native adds. ``Doing the Texas accent, dyeing my hair brown, putting on 15 pounds; I had to prove to myself that I could do it. And I also had to show everyone else. I've got this kind of flash-in-the-pan opportunity right now, and I wanted to seize that as much as possible.''

How very clear-eyed, intelligent and shrewd. Of course, it's no surprise that Van Der Beek is smart. It takes a special young actor, after all, to convincingly deliver the volumes of introspective dialogue superscribe Kevin Williamson supplies for the WB network hit every week. And even though he's been working on stage since the age of 13, Van Der Beek also earned a scholarship to Drew University in New Jersey, where he's maintained a 3.8 grade point average as an English major.

All that understood, there was more than a little pleasure involved in the whole ``Varsity Blues'' venture. Indeed, it was a chance for the sensitive intellectual to indulge his inner jock.

``I'm a huge football fan, so it was a dream come true,'' says Van Der Beek, the son of a minor league baseball player and a Broadway dancer-turned-gym teacher, who got into acting after a middle school head injury curtailed his blossoming football prospects. ``We had three weeks of training before shooting began, and the chance to pick up the skills and the rhythm of it was great.''

It helped if you liked getting beaten up, though.

``It was very intimidating and a real challenge to step up with the real guys on the field, in the pads, and run the plays at full speed,'' Van Der Beek adds, noting that, except for key characters portrayed by other actors, most of the athletes in ``Varsity Blues'' were actual high school football stars recruited from all over Texas.

``Because we worked so hard, and I was bigger and stronger than I'd ever been in my life, I had this false sense of confidence. We were deluded into thinking that we could actually take these hits. We did, but I just got clobbered! I'd end up on my back a lot, remembering that I'm an actor, not a football player.''

Despite all that, Van Der Beek liked the Texans. Since the film is about how Lone Star football is something of a secular religion, the local athletes provided invaluable reality checks on just how crazy parents, coaches and assorted other fans could get - and what that pressure did to guys who, regardless of their power and prowess, were still just kids.

``There was no Hollywood bull; we didn't feel like actors with these guys,'' he explains. ``Even though we all had trailers, we dressed in the locker room with the rest of the team. And they were all really engaged, since we were essentially telling their story. They were just so much help.''

While the boys accepted Van Der Beek as one of their own, the girls were a different story.

``There were a lot of school scenes, party scenes and, of course, all of the big games,'' notes ``Varsity Blues'' director Brian Robbins. ``So we were shooting with a lot of extras, and all the girls in Texas went crazy for James.''

``On the football field, it took about 10 minutes for people to recognize me with the dark hair,'' Van Der Beek recalls, obviously embarrassed by the whole situation. ``Then everyone in the stands would figure it out, and it was all over. It got to the point where I couldn't sign autographs, because if I went up to the stands, all the extras would flock around and screw up filming. People got crushed against the barriers and it became a safety risk.

``What I ended up doing was waiting until the sun came up and shooting stopped. I'd been playing all night, I was battered and sore and sweaty, and everybody was, like, `Can I take a picture?' I'd go, `Sure. I've been wearing a helmet for the past nine hours, but go crazy.' I'm going to be haunted by those pictures on the Internet for the rest of my life.''

Robbins found silver linings in the disruptive Dawsonmania.

``You like to have a star that everybody knows, so it helped out,'' says the director, who cast Van Der Beek in the movie before ``Creek'' premiered in the winter of 1998. ``Besides, we got to give James endless Dawson abuse on the set. Whenever he'd get out of line, I'd just put him in his place by saying, `Aw, Dawson doesn't want to do this, Dawson doesn't want to do that.' ''

In reality, Robbins - who had his own brush with youth stardom when he appeared on the sitcom ``Head of the Class'' - was greatly impressed by Van Der Beek's sensible response to sudden celebrity.

``We talked a lot about how weird it is to be a TV star,'' Robbins notes. ``He's handling it very well. He's a very humble guy.''

``Pop Culture Phenomenon,'' Van Der Beek says, with a dismissive laugh, of his current status. ``I mean, I was an English major in college and an unknown theater actor, then I got a job and somebody wrote in a magazine that I was a Pop Culture Phenomenon. It's just a label that they put on me and Josh and Katie and Michelle (`Creek' co-stars Jackson, Holmes and Williams, respectively), but it's almost never in our consciousness.

``It is an adjustment, it changes your daily life in many ways, but you've just got to accept that,'' he acknowledges. ``As Cheesy Actor as this is gonna sound, though, it's always been about the work. That's why I got into the business, and `Dawson's Creek' has given me a lot of great opportunities that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten.''

Besides, there's something to be said for reliving one's high school days without the pain of getting tackled all night long.

``I know some critics say that 15-year-olds don't talk like that,'' he says of the improbably articulate ``Dawson's'' crew. ``But it's a lot of fun to get the chance to relive those horrific, adolescent moments, but somebody's put the right words in your mouth that you could never quite come up with at the time.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) MAKING THE `Varsity'

`Dawson's Creek' star James Van Der Beek letters in new film

(2) James Van Der Beek, left, and Jon Voight star in ``Varsity Blues,'' which spotlights the obsession many Texans have with high school football.