Michael Caine and Vin Diesel are so close, they’re practically family.

In his new memoir Don’t Look Back, You’ll Trip Over, the two-time Oscar winner reflected on his long friendship with the Fast and Furious star. “Vin’s special. I love Vin,” Caine writes. “We first met at a dinner party about thirty years ago. I just instinctively greeted him with a hug and announced to the whole room, ‘This is my son!’”

Caine couldn’t quite explain the immediate bond between the two actors. “Sometimes, you sense a connection. I just liked the guy immediately, he has a big heart,” the Cider House Rules star writes. “It turned out he was going through some tough times back then, so I think perhaps it made an impression upon him to be embraced and treated with love. Anyway, we’ve been great friends ever since.”

Caine and Diesel eventually made a movie together in 2015: The Last Witch Hunter. “My grandchildren, Taylor, Allegra, and Miles loved that film!” Caine writes. “Vin really speaks to the younger generation. He’s a real star, and multi-talented. A fine producer who also writes scripts and gets deeply involved in the concept of his movies.”

The Italian Job star says that he and his wife, Shakira, are “really close” with Diesel and his partner, Paloma Jimenez. “Whenever they’re in town, we have dinner together,” he notes. “Or they come over to our flat for a catch-up. Vin flies around the place with this traveling company of people — a sort of mobile family and support structure. I think you probably need that in the modern business. It’s certainly a change from my time.”

In a 2015 interview with The Miami Herald promoting The Last Witch Hunter, Diesel told his side of the story. “I always loved Michael Caine,” the Riddick star said at the time. “My grandmother was a huge Michael Caine fan, and I actually met Michael Caine maybe 12, 13 years ago. We became friends, and so if I went out to London, we’d have dinner, if he came here, we’d have dinner.”

Diesel also said that Caine wanted to collaborate with him, but was apprehensive about the star’s penchant for vehicular action. “We always wanted to do something together,” Diesel said. “And when I finally got this project and called him, he thought I was calling him to be in Fast & Furious, and so his first response was, ‘I don’t even drive anymore! How are you gonna ask me to do Fast & Furious?'”

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Elsewhere in his memoir, Caine reflects on his relationship with Diesel’s costar-slash-rival, Dwayne Johnson. “He’s another really great person,” Caine writes of Johnson, whom he worked with on 2012’s Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. “Down-to-earth and warm. I love talking to these guys, hearing what they’ve been up to all over the world. They carry the torch!”

Don’t Look Back, You’ll Trip Over is on shelves now.