Who Plays Dick Keller in The Stunt Driver 2026? Actor Cast & Character Guide

There are plenty of ridiculous stories in movie history, but the real story behind The Stunt Driver is on another level. A guy wants to launch a rocket-powered car roughly a mile across the Saint Lawrence River, from Canada toward the United States, and somehow convince other people that this is a reasonable thing to build. That alone sounds like the kind of plot a screenwriter would get rejected for being too stupid. Except Ken Carter really tried to do it.

And then there is Dick Keller.

If you are wondering who plays Dick Keller in The Stunt Driver (2026), the answer is Ed Helms. That casting choice immediately caught my attention because Helms is usually associated with comedy, awkwardness and characters who somehow make terrible situations even more uncomfortable. Here, though, he gets to play the guy who has to stand next to an absolutely insane dream and ask the one question nobody else seems willing to ask: “Are we seriously going to do this?”

That makes Keller one of the most interesting people in the movie. Ken Carter may be the headline act, but Dick Keller is the man who has to deal with the physics, the machinery and the terrifying possibility that all of this could end with somebody dead.

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Ed Helms Plays Dick Keller in The Stunt Driver

Ed Helms plays Dick Keller, the engineer responsible for helping turn Ken Carter’s impossible idea into an actual machine. And honestly, this is exactly the kind of casting that can either work brilliantly or completely derail a movie.

Helms has spent years proving that he can play nervous, decent, slightly overwhelmed men without turning them into complete caricatures. Andy Bernard in The Office is obviously the role most people will immediately remember, while The Hangover movies showed how effective he can be when comedy is built around genuine panic and escalating disaster.

That background actually makes him a surprisingly good fit for Keller.

Dick isn’t supposed to be the loudest person in the room. He isn’t chasing fame in the same way Carter is. He isn’t standing around dreaming about becoming a legend. He’s looking at a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental and thinking about what happens when several tons of metal, fuel and human stupidity leave a ramp at ridiculous speed.

That contrast gives Helms something much more interesting to play than a simple comedy sidekick.

Dick Keller Is the Guy Who Knows This Could Go Horribly Wrong

This is where I think The Stunt Driver has a real advantage over a standard daredevil biopic. It would have been incredibly easy to make Ken Carter the lovable crazy guy and turn everybody around him into supporting characters who simply cheer him on.

Thankfully, Dick Keller exists.

While Carter is obsessed with making the jump happen, Keller has to confront the ugly technical details. A huge launch ramp. A rocket system. Fuel. Structural problems. Wind. Weight. Trajectory. And, most importantly, a human being sitting inside the thing.

Imagine being the engineer on this project. Every time somebody says, “We can make it work,” you’re probably the person calculating exactly how many different ways it can fail.

That’s what makes Keller such a useful character. He isn’t there just to explain technical nonsense to the audience. He represents the reality that Carter’s dream has consequences.

And that makes the relationship between the two men much more entertaining than the basic “crazy guy and sensible guy” setup might suggest.

Ed Helms Gets Away From the Andy Bernard Shadow

I’ll admit that I was initially skeptical about Ed Helms in this role. When an actor becomes strongly associated with one character, it can be difficult not to see that character everywhere. Put Helms in a room with a ridiculous plan and a nervous expression, and part of your brain immediately starts expecting Andy Bernard to walk through the door.

But Dick Keller gives Helms enough dramatic material to push past that association.

The best version of this performance isn’t Helms trying to prove that he’s suddenly a serious dramatic actor. It’s Helms using the things he’s already good at — timing, awkwardness, frustration and understated panic — and putting them into a much more dangerous environment.

There is something inherently funny about an engineer being surrounded by people who are completely convinced that an insane stunt is going to work while he is probably thinking about insurance, fuel systems and basic survival.

That kind of humor feels much more natural to Helms than forcing him into broad comedy.

Jay Baruchel and Ed Helms Have the Right Kind of Conflict

Jay Baruchel plays Ken Carter, the man behind the infamous “Mad Canadian” stunt. If Helms is the voice of engineering reality, Baruchel gets to play the opposite side of the equation: obsession.

And that pairing is where the movie really starts to click for me.

Carter doesn’t necessarily need everyone around him to believe the jump is sensible. He needs them to believe it is possible. Keller is much harder to convince because he understands exactly how many things need to go right before the car ever reaches the other side.

That creates a great source of tension without requiring the movie to manufacture some ridiculous personal feud. They want the same thing, but they approach it from completely different directions.

The Crazy Part Is That This Really Happened

This is the part that makes The Stunt Driver much harder to dismiss as another Hollywood stunt movie.

The story comes from Ken Carter’s real attempt to launch a rocket-powered vehicle over the Saint Lawrence River. The project was also documented in the 1981 film The Devil at Your Heels, which followed Carter’s obsession and the increasingly complicated effort to make his dream happen.

The movie’s version of Dick Keller is therefore rooted in a real person who had to confront the engineering problems behind Carter’s ambition.

And those problems were not minor.

The project involved a massive ramp in Ontario, a heavily modified Lincoln Continental and rocket propulsion using hydrogen peroxide. There were technical failures, fuel problems, structural concerns and weather complications. When you hear all of that, the idea starts sounding less like a sports stunt and more like an extremely expensive argument with the laws of physics.

That’s why I like having Keller at the center of the engineering side of the story. Without him, Carter’s ambition could easily become romanticized. With him, the audience gets somebody who can look at the dream and see the enormous pile of problems underneath it.

The 1970s Setting Could Have Been a Cheap Gimmick

Another thing I was watching closely was the period atmosphere. Movies set in the 1970s can go horribly wrong when the production decides that “retro” simply means putting everyone in funny clothes and filling every room with cigarette smoke.

The Stunt Driver appears to be aiming for something more convincing.

The production has leaned into the grimy, chaotic atmosphere surrounding Carter’s stunt operation, with period costumes, locations and documentary-style material helping the movie feel connected to the era rather than simply decorated like it.

I especially like the reported contrast between cinematic recreations and footage inspired by the rough visual texture of old documentary filmmaking. A story like this shouldn’t look too polished. If everything feels clean and expensive, you lose some of the madness.

This is supposed to feel like a bunch of people in the 1970s deciding that building a rocket car and firing it across a river is a perfectly reasonable way to spend their time.

Why Dick Keller Might Be the Most Relatable Character

Let’s be honest: most of us are never going to understand Ken Carter’s mindset.

Wanting to become famous by launching yourself across a massive body of water in a rocket-powered car is not exactly a relatable hobby.

Dick Keller is different.

He is the guy watching somebody make an outrageous decision and realizing that somebody has to make the decision physically possible. He can understand the ambition while still being terrified of the consequences. That’s a much more recognizable human reaction.

And this is where I expect Ed Helms to make the biggest impression. If he plays Keller as someone who genuinely cares about Carter rather than simply someone who thinks Carter is an idiot, the character becomes much more emotionally interesting.

He isn’t trying to stop Carter because he hates the dream. He’s trying to keep the person inside the dream alive.

The Supporting Cast Gives the Story More Weight

Ed Helms and Jay Baruchel are obviously the central pairing, but the supporting cast gives the movie plenty of room to expand beyond the workshop.

• Ben Foster as Evel Knievel brings another layer of daredevil mythology into the story.
• Laurence Leboeuf as Gloria provides a reminder that Carter’s obsession affects people who aren’t sitting inside the rocket car.
• Dan Bakkedahl as Bill Wilkins represents the business and publicity machine surrounding the stunt.

That last part matters more than it might initially seem. Carter’s stunt isn’t just a technical challenge. Once money, media attention and celebrity enter the picture, walking away becomes much harder.

The Stunt Driver Release Date

The Stunt Driver premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2026, before its wider theatrical release in the United States and Canada on September 25, 2026.

The movie was directed and written by Michael Dowse, with production involving Cardinal Films, Mongrel Media and Wild Atlantic Pictures. Filming began in September 2025 in Quebec, including locations around Montreal and the Saint Lawrence River.

For a movie built around one of the strangest real-life stunts imaginable, those locations are more than just scenery. The river is effectively one of the film’s major characters. You know exactly what Carter is trying to cross, and every shot of that water makes the eventual attempt feel increasingly insane.

So, Is Ed Helms the Real Standout?

If you came here specifically because you searched “Who plays Dick Keller in The Stunt Driver?”, yes, it’s Ed Helms. But the more interesting question is why the character matters so much.

For me, Keller is the ingredient that keeps the movie from becoming a simple celebration of reckless behavior. Carter is the spectacle. The rocket car is the hook. The impossible jump is the thing that gets people talking.

Dick Keller is the reality check.

That’s also why I’m more interested in Helms’ performance than I initially expected to be. He doesn’t need to steal every scene. In fact, Keller works better when he’s standing slightly outside the madness, watching everyone else lose their minds while he tries to figure out how to stop a catastrophic engineering failure.

And if the movie manages to balance that tension with the weird humor of the real story, it could be one of those rare biographical films where the absurdity doesn’t need to be exaggerated. The truth is already ridiculous enough.

That is ultimately what makes The Stunt Driver fascinating to me. You have a reckless daredevil, an engineer who knows better but keeps working anyway, a rocket-powered car, a giant ramp, media pressure and an enormous body of water sitting directly in front of them.

And somewhere in the middle of all that chaos is Ed Helms, playing the one guy who seems to understand exactly how bad this idea could get.

That sounds like a character worth watching.