Christopher Nolan may be at the top of his game, but he still gets nervous every time one of his movies is about to be released.

Appearing Tuesday on “The Daily Show,” hosted by Jon Stewart, the “Oppenheimer” director said releasing a movie is always daunting because he puts so much of himself into each project.

“One of the responsibilities, but one of the great thrills of my job, is that you get to live in a world for a couple of years, and I dedicate myself to that completely. For me, that never ends, really, until the movie comes out to the public,” Nolan told Stewart. “The audience finishes the movie. They tell us what we did.”

Ahead of the July 17 release of his next film, “The Odyssey,” Nolan said, “Right now, we’re a few days away. And it’s a scary time.”

The film, starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland, is based on the ancient Greek epic by Homer, which tells the story of Odysseus’ 10-year struggle to return to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

Nolan said he screened the film for test audiences throughout production.

“You get a sense of how the movie is presented to the audience,” he said.

Still, the uncertainty surrounding a global launch never goes away, he added.

“It never gets easier and it’s absolutely terrifying,” Nolan said.

Expectations for “The Odyssey” are especially high. The film is the first feature film shot entirely with Imax cameras, fueling demand for premium Imax and 70mm screenings. Some fans travel abroad to see it, while others pay up to $600 for tickets to one of its first screenings.

It is not the first time that Nolan talks about the nerves he feels before the premiere of a film.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times before the release of “Dunkirk” in 2017, Nolan described the wait before audiences saw the film as “this horrible, tense moment.”

“It’s this kind of horrible stress pattern,” he said.

Nolan isn’t the only one who feels this way. Other acclaimed directors have also spoken about the pressure of making films.

In 2012, Steven Spielberg told CBS News that he still experiences “stage fright every morning” when he arrives on set.

“If I didn’t have that, I wouldn’t be a director. You can’t make a great movie from a position of great confidence. The more nervous I am, I think the better the movies turn out,” Spielberg said.

In 2022, before the release of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” James Cameron told AP News that no filmmaker is immune to pre-release jitters. Anyone who “says they don’t get nervous before a movie premieres” is a liar, Cameron said at the time.