Former Bollywood leading lady Madhuri Dixit says she is anxious about balancing her career with caring for her young sons when she films a new movie early next year, a news report said on Wednesday.

Her comeback film, likely to be released by mid-2007, will be produced and directed by Yashraj Films, a company run by veteran Bollywood filmmaker Yash Chopra. No details were available about the script or other members of the cast.

Dixit told The Times of India newspaper that while her children were important, she needed to think of the world outside her home.

``I'm extremely nervous,'' the newspaper quoted her as saying. ``My children are the most important part of my life. But they are growing and need to be a little independent.''

She said she was comfortable with Chopra, whom she described as ``sensitive to the schedules of an actor who is a wife and mother.''

Dixit, who was one of India's most sought-after stars, stopped acting after marrying a U.S.-based Indian surgeon in 1999.

Her last hit movie, released in 2002, was ``Devdas,'' in which she played a courtesan in a saga of doomed love.