For Michael Angarano, acting professionally since he was 12, life – and an aimless drive – inspired Friday’s “Sacramento.”

“This is definitely a personal project, though I had never been to Sacramento when we started writing this,” Angarano, 37, said in a Zoom interview.

He directs, stars and co-wrote and produced the pensive comedy with Chris Smith. “It started about 10 years ago. We are both actors and were in a pilot together.

“The pilot didn’t get picked up. We were driving around Los Angeles, both unemployed, with nothing to do. One day we merged onto the freeway. There was a sign, 5 North Sacramento. And I said, Hey! you want to go to Sacramento? ‘Sure, let’s go on a long drive to a city I know nothing about and have no desire to visit.’

“That’s really where the film started. Everything was built and reverse engineered around that idea of a scene. Over 10 years, the story would evolve and take shape, and these characters would become more real and nuanced to us.”

Angarano’s Rickey is a nice guy with a penchant for exaggeration. When he sees his buddy Glenn (Michael Cera), who’s married to the seriously pregnant Rosie (Kristen Stewart) and seriously depressed since he’s lost his job, Rickey dreams up a wild reason to take Glenn on an impulsive road trip, from LA to Sacramento.

Does Angarano see this as a way to take rejection – that failed pilot – and turn it into a positive?

“That’s a nice way of looking at it. It is interesting to think, if that did get picked up, there would have been no ‘Sacramento.’ I’ve learned over the course of my life that it is those opportunities and those moments of failures or losses or rejection that you have to build from. Writing was always a very natural outlet for me.”

While comical, “Sacrament” shows how destructive untreated mental illness can become.

“These characters aren’t inspired by specific people I know but I know people who have struggled. I myself have struggled,” he said.

“It is common among people my age, especially young men who don’t really have the skills to communicate or be vulnerable with what they’re going through.

“This was always something Chris and I felt important to explore: The inability men have to communicate with one another. And because it is a struggle, we would rewrite the script, go back and look at a scene through the lens of: What are they withholding? What are they really going through? How are they doing – and are they sharing that?”

“Sacramento” is in theaters Friday