I was out in America. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels had happened a few years before, it was maybe 2000 or 2001, and I went out to LA. I was just pursuing my acting, like you do, out there for the pilot season looking for work.

I stumbled across Hard Eight [also known as Sydney] rather than being directed towards it – I think I saw it first on a movie channel. I had seen Boogie Nights by the director Paul Thomas Anderson; this is his first film. The title is a gambling term for craps on the craps table. I don't understand the finer workings of craps but I know that a "hard eight" is a particularly difficult number to hit.

It's the story of an old guy in Las Vegas played by Philip Baker Hall who takes a young man, John C Reilly, under his wing. Reilly's character is kind of down on his luck and in love with a waitress played by Gwyneth Paltrow. A sort of drama unfolds.

It's not a very fast-paced film; it's slow and languid and maybe not to a lot of people's taste. But for me, it is very rich in character and human story – that's what I found so compelling. It harks back to those 1970s films when films were about people.

I wasn't thinking about directing when I first saw it. I was just a jobbing actor. But it allowed me to recognise that films that are very simply done are just as compelling as "spectacular" films. That was good because it meant that when I started directing, I knew I could make a film that didn't rely on huge budgets and stars. A film about people is just as compelling as a film about an alien spaceship crash-landing in Texas.

Films such as Hard Eight and It's a Wonderful Life, or even A Fistful of Dollars, stand the test of time not because they're about a time or place, but because they're about human relationships.

Dexter Fletcher's directorial debut Wild Bill opens on 23 March