When it premiered on January 15, 1999, Varsity Blues hit a landscape primed for its success. The teen film genre experienced a renaissance in the late ’90s, and the high school football dramedy included some of the brightest lights of that era, including James Van Der Beek, one year into his Dawson’s Creek stardom, as her Jonathan “Mox” Moxon, and Paul Walker, whose villainous turn in teen rom-com She’s All That would be released just two weeks later, as Lance Harbor, Mox’s best friend. Varsity Blues was a monster hit with teen viewers, reaching #1 at the box office, earning $54.3 million on a $16 million budget, and jump-starting the careers of Ali Larter, Amy Smart and Scott Caan (Jesse Plemons also had his second-ever acting credit in a tiny role).

27 years later, three of the film’s young stars have tragically passed: Walker died on November 30, 2013 at the age of 40, in a car accident; Ron Lester, who played comic relief and unlikely hero Billy Bob, died on June 17, 2016 at the age of 45 due to liver and kidney failure; and Van Der Beek died on February 11, 2026, at the age of 48, after a lengthy battle with colorectal cancer.

To find out what the rest of the cast is up to, including who is starring on a Paramount+ series and who became an actual sports coach, read on.

Coach Bud Kilmer

(c)Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection/ © Republic Pictures /Courtesy Everett Collection

An Oscar-nominated superstar of ’70s “New Hollywood” cinema, by the mid-’90s, Voight was receiving more attention for the being the father of then-rising star Angelina Jolie than his work on films like Midnight Cowboy. His turn as the boundary-pushing coach in Varsity Blues, alongside similarly villainous roles in Mission Impossible (1996) and Enemy of the State (1998) helped Voight mount a mainstream film comeback.

In recent years, Voight was perhaps most visible in his role as Mickey Donovan, the difficult father of the title character on Showtime series Ray Donovan. Though near 90, Voight continues to work frequently: in 2024 alone, he costarred in the controversial Francis Ford Coppola film Megalopolis, and played KGB agent Viktor Petrovich alongside Dennis Quaid‘s Ronald Reagan in the biopic Reagan. His most recent film was 2025’s The Last Gunfighter.

Scott Caan, 49

Charlie Tweeder

c)Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection/ © Lionsgate / courtesy Everett Collection

The role of hard-partying player Charlie was the first major film credit of Scott Caan, son of iconic actor James Caan. But while he would find himself in a few other major films during the early ’00s, including Boiler Room and Ocean’s Eleven, TV is where the younger Caan would truly thrive, first as manager Scott Lavin on Entourage, and then for 10 seasons as Detective Danny “Danno” Williams on the CBS reboot of Hawaii Five-o.

On the small screen, Caan was most recently one of the stars of the Fox series Alert: Missing Persons Unit, which aired three seasons between 2023 and 2025. He will next be seen in an unknown role in The Adventures of Cliff Booth, David Fincher‘s sequel to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Amy Smart, 49

Julie “Jules” Harbor

(c)Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection/ ©CW / Courtesy Everett Collection

The role of Julie, the good-girl girlfriend of Van Der Beek’s Mox, was Smart’s first major role, after a small part in 1997’s critical and box office failure Starship Troopers. Shortly after Varsity Blues, she joined the cast of Felicity, playing Felicity’s roommate Ruby, who has a flirtation with Noel but ultimately quits school following an unplanned pregnancy.

From there, Smart became a familiar face at ’00s cinemas, starring in films like Road Trip (2000), The Butterfly Effect (2004) and Just Friends (2005), alongside an early-career Ryan Reynolds. In the 2010s, she pivoted to TV, where she had a recurring role on Shameless, and starred in the CW/ DC Universe series Stargirl, where she portrayed Barbara Whitmore, mother to super-powered teen Stargirl. Most recently, she was seen alongside Judd Hirsch in the 2024 film Rally Caps, and the 2024 Lifetime movie Held Hostage in My House.

Ali Larter, 49

Darcy Sears

(c)Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection/ © Relativity Media /Courtesy Everett Collection

The role of Darcy, a sassy and saucy cheerleader who tries to seduce Mox while wearing an infamous “whipped cream bikini,” was Larter’s first acting gig; prior to that she worked as a model (a career in which she met and befriended future costar Amy Smart).

She first attained widespread attention in 1996 as a cover model for Esquire, portraying fictional actress Allegra Coleman in a fake profile published by the magazine to lampoon celebrity culture. Soon after, she booked a number of TV guest spots, before coming to major public attention through her Varsity Blues role.

That same year, she appeared in teen rom-com Drive Me Crazy and horror remake House on Haunted Hill — a role that perhaps foreshadowed one of Larter’s biggest parts, the terrorized teen Clear Rivers in horror films Final Destination (2000) and Final Destination 2 (2003). She also grabbed ’00s fame as the trophy wife whose murder trial is at the heart of Legally Blonde (2001), the leader of a group of zombie apocalypse survivors in Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) and a crazed stalker who threatens Beyonce and Idris Elba‘s family in Obsessed (2009).

In 2006, she tackled one of her most iconic parts: Niki Sanders, a woman with super human strength and multiple personalities on Heroes. Larter remained on the series for all four seasons; after her character was killed in season three, she portrayed her sister, the similarly superhuman Tracey Strauss.

In 2010, Larter gave birth to her first child and took a hiatus from acting. In the 2010s, she returned to performing, mostly on the small screen — though she reprised her Resident Evil role in 2016’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, she largely worked in TV projects, including The Rookie and the sports drama Pitch. Today, she can be seen as Angela, the manipulative ex of Billy Bob Thornton‘s Tommy on the hit Paramount+ series Landman.

Eliel Swinton, 50

Wendell Brown

When Swinton played running back Wendell Brown, he was drawing from life:  unlike the rest of the cast, he was an accomplished football player who was nationally ranked in high school, and later played for Stanford University. An injury curtailed his promising pro sports career, ending with him getting dropped by the Kansas City Chiefs during training.

After some behind-the-scenes work in Hollywood, Swinton became a speed and agility training coach, and posts about his work on his Instagram account.

Richard Lineback, 74

Joe Harbor

Lineback played the father of Walker and Smart’s characters – a role that followed a series of smaller parts in ’90s hits like Speed, Natural Born Killers, and Twister. Though his last role in a major film was in 2002’s The Ring, he continued to act on TV into the 2000s, with his final roles on an episode of NCIS in 2008 and Justified in 2012.

Thomas F. Duffy, 70

Sam Moxon

Duffy played Mox’s dad, who was obsessed with his son’s football career and was the recipient of the film’s famous “I don’t want your life” line — a role that came 17 years after Duff’s 1982 breakthrough as the antagonist in Death Wish II. Following Varsity Blues, Duffy continued to act regularly on TV, with roles on The X-Files, ER, Without a Trace, The Middle and Shameless. His last major film credit was the 2011 J. J. Abrams film Super 8; he also appeared in the 2014 Danny Glover thriller Supremacy.