Nicolas Cage

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Nicolas Cage recently had an emotional moment with a fan.

In his new movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, the Oscar winner plays a fictionalized version of himself who agrees to hang out with a wealthy man who claims to be his biggest fan.

Speaking with PEOPLE on April 10 about any memorable interactions he’s had with fans over the years, Cage, 58, shared that he had recently chatted with a woman who related to his 1998 film City of Angels, a romance in which he plays an angel opposite Meg Ryan.

“I had a pretty poignant one last night,” he says. “I was downstairs in the bar and I met a woman who said hello to me. She said that, sadly, her daughter had died in 1997 in a car accident. However, she said, ‘Your movie came out’ — a movie that I don’t hear about very often, but which is a good movie called City of Angels — ‘and every time I see the movie I feel like I’m with my daughter again,’ because Meg’s character had a car accident in the movie.”

“She said, ‘When the song comes on, the Alanis Morissette song, I’m re-bonded with my daughter,’ ” adds Cage. “She was genuine, she was sincere, and I thought to myself, ‘Wow, that’s probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.’ ”

“It warmed my heart that my little movie could help in some way to that level,” he says.

Nicholas Cage
Warner Brothers/Everett Collection Nicolas Cage in City of Angels (1998)

Cage also explains to PEOPLE how the version of himself in Massive Talent differs from his real-life self.

Unlike the “Nick Cage” in the film who becomes preoccupied with his career at the cost of quality time with his daughter, Cage always prioritizes his kids in his real life. The actor is dad to sons Weston, 31, and Kal-El, 16, plus he and wife Riko Shibata are currently expecting a baby daughter.

“First and foremost … there’s no version of Nick Cage in reality that doesn’t want to spend time with his children,” he says. “There’s no version of Nick Cage that didn’t put family first over career. I turned down Lord of the Rings and I turned down Matrix because I didn’t want to go to New Zealand for three years or Australia for three years because I needed to be home with my son Weston, that’s a fact.”

“So there is a huge disparity between that Nick Cage in Massive Talent and the Nick Cage sitting in front of you right now,” he adds.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is now in theaters.