Joshua Jackson had to make a tricky transition before Dawson's Creek
Before Joshua Jackson landed his breakout role as Pacey Witter on Dawson's Creek, he had already been working for years as a child actor.
Jackson's mom was a casting director who helped him get his first big gig on the 1991 film Crooked Hearts when he was just 11.
In a Q interview with guest host Gill Deacon, the Vancouver-born actor says his mom was "completely uninterested in being a stage mom," but she supported his enthusiasm for the performing arts and taught him the importance of being a professional on set.
"I certainly wasn't shoved into it, it was something that I was totally gung-ho for," he says. "[I remember] how important it was for me to be in a space with adults where they heard me, right? You show up, you do your job and these grown-ups will respect you…. That was the addictive part. Like, 'Oh, look, I can walk through the world as a quasi-grown-up in this space in a way that I cannot anywhere else.'"
Roughly a year or so after that, Jackson played Charlie Conway in one of Disney's most iconic films, The Mighty Ducks, which went on to become a successful franchise. He says he thinks those movies were hits because they didn't talk down to kids.
"I remember being so annoyed at that age … and I found so much of what was made 'for me' to be really insulting and annoying," Jackson says. "You're young, you're not dumb."
Similar to The Mighty Ducks, the hit teen drama Dawson's Creek also became known for reflecting the maturity and intelligence of young people. But leading up to that role, Jackson experienced a long dry spell in his career as he made the tricky transition from child star to teen heartthrob.
"I wasn't just going through a dry spell — I was dead in the water," he says. "I was preparing to no longer be an actor at 17 or 18 years old…. I was not a kid, so those roles were suddenly gone, but I wasn't anything close to a man yet, and I was kind of a gawky young adult. So, yeah, that transition was hard."
Like most actors, Jackson says he's experienced several ups and downs in his career.
"The ups are fabulous, but what you're really trying to do is survive the downs," he says. "And I don't know anybody, like literally anybody, who's had a linear up career. This is not part of the way the thing works."
You can catch Jackson narrating the Canadian Audible Original series Oracle 3: Murder at the Grandview, which is a psychological thriller that combines crime investigations with supernatural elements.
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