Mass Effect 2007 crash on dialogues

I am playing ME1 (2007) and the game frequently crashes on dialogues (especially with crew members, Tali, Garrus, etc). I have updated my GPU drivers to the latest possible (I am playing on a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060), I have added exclusion to the antivirus and the firewall, and I play the game providing admin rights. The game launches through the EA app. I have tried to repair the app through EA to no avail. What can I do?

There is no error message, ME1 just freezes and I have to exit and close thru the Task Manager.

Thanks!