I get asked all the time what I think Tracy Beaker is up to now and never really have an answer. I grew up with Tracy, playing her in the BBC TV series The Story of Tracy Beaker from the age of 12 to 16, and then again from when I was 19 in Tracy Beaker Returns – when she comes back as a care worker. We explored the first kiss situation together, and so much else. Like so many of her age, she had a wild imagination, and lots of crazy scenarios in her head.

But in many ways I’m just like everyone else who invested all those years in the TV programme – we were all left wondering what on earth she would get up to. That’s why it’s so exciting that Jacqueline Wilson, who wrote the books, is working on a sequel called My Mum Tracy Beaker. I always wondered if Tracy would end up as just another statistic, and now we are going to find out. I thought she was so determined that she wouldn’t let her difficult start in life hold her back.

When I got the part of Tracy I had hardly even met any looked-after children. At the start she is struggling to find a family she can fit in with, yo-yoing in and out of foster placements and back to “the Dumping Ground”, which is what she calls the care home (and which now has a spin-off TV series of its own). She is a feisty character. Her emotions are all over the place and she kicks off quite a lot – one minute she is nice as pie, the next she is having a fight.

I have had many a parent say they didn’t approve of Tracy Beaker, and some of those who were children at the time tell me they were banned from watching it, but she wasn’t just naughty – there were always reasons for her behaviour. She knew when something was wrong, and in her mind she was going to fight for what she thought was right. I thought that was awesome.

Growing up in the 1990s I mainly watched cartoons, and the only programmes that touched on stuff we didn’t already know about were Grange Hill and Byker Grove. So Tracy Beaker broke new ground. At its heart was a message about how different families work, and how not everyone is lucky enough to have a mum and a dad and a house. I’d like to think that, thanks to Tracy, looked-after kids are less embarrassed now about telling their friends where they come from; that other children have some understanding of what growing up in foster care means. I think that’s why the series was such a success on so many levels – last year Wilson received a Bafta special award for her contribution to British children’s television. Her creation was actually about something and did something special. It gave looked-after kids a voice.

Even if viewers sometimes blur the lines and struggle to tell us apart, I’m very different from Tracy. She was a hothead, whereas I’m pretty calm. But like her, I’m a mum now too. You’re always going to get a mixed reaction to a sequel like this, because people have made up their own minds what became of Tracy. But I can’t wait to find out.

• Dani Harmer is an actor who played Tracy Beaker in the Bafta-winning BBC series based on Jacqueline Wilson’s books