LOS ANGELES—When Hiccup, the imaginative Viking boy at the centre of the animated movie How to Train Your Dragon, opens his mouth, we expect to hear the traditional, whiny, high-octave voice of a child actor. Instead, we get a postpubescent Hiccup voiced by Canadian actor Jay Baruchel. The nasal tones of the Montreal-based Baruchel is a changeup that helps make Hiccup’s teen rebellion against Viking leaders seem somewhat more authentic. In an L.A. interview room, Baruchel says that when he first took on the role he tried another approach but thought the character would be more relatable if he went deep.

“I originally thought he would sound like the little character in the Hercules cartoons, and so when we first started recording I tried to do it in a little-kid voice, which was what I was asked to do. But it was coming off as disingenuous. So they [codirectors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders] said, ”˜Be yourself.’ I think it is more accessible to people now, which is good, because a character like Hiccup is supposed to represent the audience. I think that him being more mature and a normal teenager allows the audience to connect with him more than if he was just a regular cartoon character.”

The film, which opens Friday (March 26) in Vancouver, is adapted from the book of the same name by Cressida Cowell and tells the story of a Viking village’s continuous battle with marauding dragons. Viking leader Stoick (Gerard Butler) has given up on his son Hiccup’s chances of succeeding him because he doesn’t appear to have the physical or mental makeup for dragon-slaying. Hiccup doesn’t want to kill anything, but he eventually discovers there are other ways of being a hero.

Baruchel himself could be on his way to becoming a Canadian hero. The scrawny actor with the Maple Leaf tattoo has been moving back and forth between U.S. and Canadian movies for most of his career. Although he has had costarring roles in Knocked Up, Million Dollar Baby, and Tropic Thunder and recently starred in the comedy She’s Out of My League, he still lives three blocks from the Montreal house that he grew up in. More importantly, he is using his success in the U.S. to help small Canadian films get made. In fact, he has made five movies in five years in four Canadian provinces, including B.C., where he made Fetching Cody.

He recently completed shooting the big-budget American movie The Sorcerer’s Apprentice opposite Nicolas Cage, and he then headed home to Montreal to film the Canadian film Notre Dame de Grace. In May, he will be seen in another Canadian movie, The Trotsky. He says that he couldn’t have balanced work in big U.S. movies and Canadian independents without a little help from his American friends.

“I have people in L.A. who work their asses off to make sure that I can make movies at home. My agents have said to me, ”˜If you are doing an independent film, it is going to be in Canada. You do big movies here and small movies in Canada. You are not going to do independent films in America. That is what Canada is for.’ What is amazing is that they are just as psyched as I am. They all make their way to the Toronto festival or to [the Sundance alternative festival] Slam Dance or wherever the films premiere to show their support. They take those films just as seriously as the American films because they know they are just as important to me as something like Tropic Thunder. If people keep hiring me, I will keep going back to make films there.”

And he will keep making movies in the U.S. He says that although he was aware that his future in American films might ride on the success of She’s Out of My League, he is not a stranger to lead roles, having starred in the Canadian series Are You Afraid of the Dark? and My Hometown as well as the American show Undeclared.

“For me, the question was: ”˜What took you so long?’ To me and my mother, I have always been the lead, so it was finally, ”˜Boys, you figured it out.’ I am real proud of everything I did in that movie. And it’s all positive. I get to come down here and make people laugh, and then I get to go home and hopefully make people think. So it’s a pretty good life. What I do for a living and how I unwind are the same. I watch movies, and that is what I will do when I get home tonight. I love movies, so the fact that I have been able to make a living from the industry is unbelievable.”