Jay Baruchel plays Canada's 'Mad Canadian' daredevil Ken Carter in The Stunt Driver

Jay Baruchel has spent his career putting Canadian stories on screen—from childhood roles in Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Popular Mechanics for Kids to his turn as BlackBerry's Mike Lazaridis. His latest role may be the most patriotic yet.

The Stunt Driver, which opens Friday, stars Baruchel as Ken Carter, an automotive daredevil who in 1976 hatched a plan to jump over the St. Lawrence River in a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental. Director Michael Dowse has crafted a gently fictionalized reworking of the National Film Board documentary The Devil at Your Heels, turning archival footage into a rowdy comedy that doubles as a poignant character study.

Baruchel first encountered the NFB doc in his twenties, when Dowse (who also directed FUBAR) mentioned wanting to adapt it. "I fell in love," Baruchel recalls, "but I never assumed I'd have anything to do with it." Years passed. One day, Dowse sent a script with a note: "You're old now. I think you could play Ken Carter." Baruchel read 40 pages and texted back that it was one of the best scripts he'd ever read.

What drew him to Carter wasn't a macho archetype—Baruchel doesn't traffic in that register. Rather, it was recognition. "I was a kid in the same world as Ken Carter," he says. Growing up in Montreal outside the wealthy enclaves of Westmount and the West Island, Baruchel was surrounded by men like Carter: driven by the need to achieve something both extraordinary and absurd. "My dad was like that," he says. "Where I grew up, all the other kids' dads were too."

The film captures Carter's constant performance of himself—the way he can't help but play to an audience. But it also shows moments when the mask slips, revealing something more earnest beneath. One sequence shows Carter being hypnotized live on a radio station (the event actually happened and exists on YouTube). The film shot two versions: one where Carter is self-aware, another where he's genuine. Dowse layered them together, using the tension between versions to deepen the portrait.

When asked about his own risk tolerance, Baruchel laughs: "I have two settings: piss poor or reckless abandon." It's the kind of line that lands differently after watching someone channel a man who lived it.