Book Club is assuredly a perfect spring movie, an affectionate rom-com about four friends—played by Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen, and Candice Bergen—who reboot their sex lives after reading the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. The greatest performance in the film, however, might belong to screen vet Andy Garcia, who smolders and captivates as a suave pilot named Mitchell who romances Keaton’s (extremely meta) character. With his perfect silver stubble and disarming one-liners, Garcia is the very definition of a modern zaddy—a racy term of endearment for a handsome, distinguished, often older man. (Think Idris Elba.) And he’ll be flattered when he hears this, once he figures out what the word “zaddy” means.

“I’ve never heard that at all,” the actor said in a phone interview, chuckling. “It’s like a slang, right? Like a street slang?”

The zaddy continued: “I’m feeling that you’re saying it with affection, so I thank you for that. I’ll run it by my son to see if he knows what that is, or my girls. I can tell you my wife would not know what ‘zaddy’ means.”

Keaton, the first star to board the film, was actually the one who chose Garcia to play her on-screen love interest. The pair have been friends since filming The Godfather: Part III in 1990, and have an easy chemistry that transmutes naturally into Book Club. Their movie meet-cute is aggressively silly: Keaton’s character, Diane, boards a plane and trips right into Mitchell’s lap. His cheery nature immediately tamps down her embarrassment.

Garcia is the calm counterpart to Keaton’s flustered persona, which makes him seem even more charismatic than usual. After a string of forgettable fare (Passengers, Geostorm), it’s especially delightful to see the Oscar-nominated actor in a role that utilizes his chops and charms, which were abundantly apparent in the film’s post-production process. “Everyone’s falling in love with Andy Garcia again,” co-writer Erin Simms said. “He pops off the screen. Once we got into the editing room, we were like, whoa.”

“My mother for Mother’s Day this year texted me and asked for Andy Garcia,” director Bill Holderman added.

Garcia, for his part, is very modest about his charming capabilities. “I just lived within the parameters of the story,” he said. “I was in service of the story, of the part . . . It’s like volumes on a mixing board. You put up the volumes that are appropriate.”

He was quick to say yes after he heard Keaton wanted him for the role, adding that working with her again had always been “on the bucket list . . . She’s the best.”

“We’ve been friends since the Godfather days. We always had a good friendship and chemistry,” he said, reminiscing about dinners they used to have with fellow Godfather star Al Pacino.

The rest of the film’s extraordinary cast was also a draw. Garcia had never met Steenburgen before, and he had encountered Fonda and Bergen only briefly over the years. He did, however, know Don Johnson, who plays Fonda’s old flame, and is golfing buddies with Craig T. Nelson, who is married to Steenburgen in the film. “It’s a great cast,” he said. “I’m hopeful that the movie will find its audience quickly. There is a tremendous need for adult fare.”

Garcia has adult dramas of his own that he’s hoping to direct and star in, including a contemporary detective noir and Hemingway & Fuentes, a long-gestating drama about Ernest Hemingway and his boat captain, Gregorio Fuentes, the inspiration behind The Old Man and the Sea. The latter project was announced back in 2009, and has since been stalled. Still, Garcia has kept busy; Book Club aside, he has six other films on the docket this year—a number that shocks even him. “Really?” he asked when presented with the facts of his own IMDb page. “I just kind of do the work and move on. In today’s world, you just don’t know how these movies surface, unless it’s a studio movie.”

One of the studio movies on his docket is the almost-certain upcoming blockbuster Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Though the film won’t be out until July, it’s already stoked a hot debate on the Internet—namely because its strategically cut trailers make it appear as though Meryl Streep’s character died sometime between the first film and the second. When I asked Garcia whether this was true, though, he suddenly couldn’t hear me.

“I have a terrible connection,” he said. “It must be the question that’s not coming through very well.”

No matter; at least Garcia doesn’t have to guard any deep secrets about Book Club, which is out in theaters today. And in case you’re wondering: no, working on the film did not inspire Garcia to pick up the Fifty Shades trilogy in any capacity. (Keaton, too, maintains that she’ll never read the books, though Fonda has. Steenburgen’s leafed through the naughty stuff, and Bergen has said she started the first novel but loaned it to a housekeeper, who never gave it back—a likely story).

“I’m good, thank you very much,” he said. “Give me The Old Man and the Sea, I’ll read that again.”

The zaddy has spoken.