I’ve watched nearly 5,000 movies, spent four years in film school, and yet, my most watched actor of all time is Nicolas Cage. According to the stats on Letterboxd, the site for film (and list) obsessives, I have seen 54 films starring Nicolas Cage. That’s over half of his entire filmography.

The “most watched” stat is one of the features that comes with Letterboxd’s yearly paid hips (starting at US$19), and well worth the cash if you need to know what movie you watch most frequently (John Butler’s Irish comedy The Stag), who has produced most of the films you’ve watched (Harvey Weinstein. Ugh.), or how many subtitled Danish dramas you’ve seen (49).

So what do you do when you find out Nicolas Cage is your most watched actor of all time, and not someone like Meryl Streep (who you’ve seen in 39 things)? Or how even that teenage obsession that led you to discover all of Christian Slater’s filmography only counts for 40 films?

My first reaction was, “of course Nicolas Cage is my number one”. Then I had to dig in to see how it happened.

I was a teenager when Cage was cool, first embracing his action-guy persona. Fifteen-year-old me watched Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

I long defended Cage with, “well he has an Oscar,” pointing to Adaptation, as proof he can act when he feels like it. Eventually, Cage took on new meaning thanks to memes and an increasingly erratic choice of movie roles, but I kept watching.

All I know is this: there are 35 Nicolas Cage movies I still need to see.