people in the world, and I met some of them." To support herself, she took assignments in low-budget films and commercials. She had minor roles in the television films My Son is Innocent (1996) and Killing Mr. Griffin (1997), and the drama A Thousand Acres (1997), which starred Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange. Williams later described her early work as "embarrassing", saying she had taken those roles purely to support herself as she "didn't have any taste [or] ideals". In 1997, unhappy with the roles she was being offered, Williams collaborated with two other actors to write a script named Blink, about prostitutes living in a Nevada brothel, which despite being sold to a production company was never made. Having learned to trade under her father's guidance, seventeen-year-old Williams entered the Robbins World Cup Championship, a futures trading contest; with a return of 1,000%, she became the first woman to win the title and the third-highest winner of all time (her father ranks first). In 1998, Williams began starring in the teen drama television series Dawson's Creek, created by Kevin Williamson and co-starring James Van Der Beek, Katie Holmes, and Joshua Jackson. The series aired for six seasons from January 1998 to May 2003 and featured Williams as Jen Lindley, a precocious New York-based teenager who relocates to the fictional town of Capeside. The series was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, where Williams lived for the six years of shooting. Reviewing the first season for The New York Times, Caryn James called it a soap opera that was "redeemed by intelligence and sharp writing" but found Williams to be "too earnest to suit this otherwise shrewdly tongue-in-cheek cast". Ray Richmond of Variety labeled it "an addictive drama with considerable heart" and considered all four leads appealing. The series was a ratings success and raised Williams's profile. Her first film release since the start of Dawson's Creek was Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), a slasher film starring Jamie Lee Curtis. The seventh installment in the Halloween film series, it featured Williams as one of several teenagers traumatized by a murderer. It grossed $55 million domestically against its $17 million budget. Williams has credited Dawson's Creek as "the best acting class", but she also admitted to not having fully invested herself in the show as "my taste was in contradiction to what I was doing every single day." She would film