Harry Connick Jr. Still Keeps in Touch with Sandra Bullock 26 Years After Hope Floats: 'She's Just Amazing' (Exclusive)

Harry Connick Jr. is grateful for his enduring friendship with Sandra Bullock.

26 years after the pair played lovers in Hope Floats, Connick, 56, tells PEOPLE that he and Bullock, 59, "still keep in touch" — and that his favorite memory from making the romantic drama was "just meeting Sandy, getting to know her."

"She's just amazing," says the actor, who can next be seen as a brooding rock star in the Netflix romantic comedy Find Me Falling, streaming Friday, July 19.

Connick is also grateful for Bullock's friendship with his wife of 30 years, Jill Goodacre Connick, and their three daughters: Georgia, 28, Kate, 26, and Charlotte, 22.

"She's a very special person," he continues of Bullock. "I loved doing that movie with her and I loved everything about it, but coming away from that with her as a friend was definitely my favorite part."

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As for how he keeps in touch with the Practical Magic actress — who, like Connick, has ties to New Orleans — nowadays, he says, "She's busy and I'm busy, but when we do talk or text each other, it's always great to hear from her."

Hope Floats was released in 1998 and follows Birdee (Bullock), a Chicago-based woman who returns to her small Texas hometown with her young daughter, after discovering her husband is having an affair with her best friend. There, she reconnects with an old high-school classmate, Justin (Connick) — and of course, sparks fly.

Back in 2018, Connick recalled nabbing his first-ever romantic leading-man role in the film during an interview on The Graham Norton Show, revealing that Bullock was the one who told him he had scored the part — but not without ribbing him first.

“She starts unbuttoning her shirt, and she starts raising her shirt up,” Connick said at the time. “On her stomach was written, ‘You got the part.' "

More than two decades later, Connick is still proving he's leading-man material in Find Me Falling, a romantic comedy set amid an idyllic Cyprus backdrop.

Speaking with PEOPLE, Connick says the movie, written and directed by Stelana Kliris, "is just about a guy who realizes what's important in life."

"He has to go very far away to figure that out, but he comes around realizing that the things that are the closest to him are the most important," the Emmy and Grammy winner adds.

Find Me Falling is on Netflix July 19.

For more from Harry Connick Jr., pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.