Actor and director Dexter Fletcher remembers his friend Bob Hoskins, with whom he appeared in The Long Good Friday and The Raggedy Rawney

I first met Bob Hoskins at a party when I was nine. It was good to connect with the man from On the Move, in which he played a character who couldn't read. He was likable and open, just like on the telly. A few years later, we worked together on The Long Good Friday. For me, as a child actor, it was an inspirational lesson in acting and one that will stay with me for ever.

Bob invited me to a screening of the film with my mum, and he became friendly with my parents and would come to dinner. He always had time for me and we would talk of films we would like to make together. My first feature, Wild Bill, was inspired by some of these conversations.

When I was 22, I received a script and an offer to play the title role in The Raggedy Rawney, Bob's film directing debut, about a mad but magical witch. "It happened by accident!" he claimed over dinner with my family.

One often felt that Bob couldn't quite believe his luck, but to the rest of us his talent and drive were obvious and his enthusiasm was a wonderful and exciting thing to be caught up in. He'd been having drinks with a producer and writer and had told them a story about a deserter in the war who disguised himself as a woman and was taken in by Romanies who believed him to be a "Rawney". The producer and writer wrote Bob's story into a script. Bob claimed he knew nothing about it until he was asked to direct it: "Fuck it! I'll have a go!" Bob loved life, and telling a story, and was good at both.

He cast the film [made in 1988] with friends, loved ones and family. My two brothers were both cast, along with my old flatmate, Bob's friends Dave Hill and his partner Jane, Zoë Wanamaker, Gawn Grainger and his favourite musician, Ian Dury, and the girl who'd played Bob's daughter in Mona Lisa – the list goes on. Bob cannily created a support system around himself and all of us, who were about to embark on 12 weeks' filming in what was then Soviet-era Prague. It was a lot of fun, but of course, hard work. This was the film responsible for Bob's famous quote: "Directing is like being pecked to death by a thousand pigeons!" But he loved it, and all of us, and we loved him back.

Bob's acting is honest and real; it's so much a part of who he was as a person. We know we're getting the truth from Bob; we feel it instinctively. It's what he uses to create those amazing performances – his heart and his instincts. We don't feel we're getting a "performance", we're getting time with him, and time with Bob is a good time.

He was everything you imagine him to be: fun, likable, generous, warm and clever. And now missed.

He was too young to leave us and I'm heartbroken that I didn't have time to return his great gift to me – and ask him to appear in one of my films. It always seemed there would be more time.

Bob Hoskins, thank you. I will always love you.