Which directors bring out best performances in actors?

SLB is known to extract good performances from his actors, including even ones that no one expects to act that well in heavy duty scenes.

He has extracted good performances from Ash, Rani, Ranveer, Deepika, PC, Salman. Otherwise Ranveer, especially, was never taken seriously as an actor or seen capable of pulling off Padmavat or Bajirao.

Which other directors, in your opinion, have ability to bring out good performances from any actor and tap skill of actor, surprise audience that an actor can perform so well?

Mani ratnam 

shyam benegal

Shoojit Sarkar 

Motvane

Vishal Bhardwaj 

madhur Bhandarkar

meghna gulzar

to name a few … 

Good list. Gulzar does bring out best in actors and showed Rekha could act when he extracted her best performance as an actor in Ghar. 

Hrishikesh Mukherjee was other one who got actors to act well and tapped their comic, tragic sides equally well. Probably first one to tap Dharmendra's comic timing and seriousness alike.

RGV of 90s  also used to extract good performances from actors. I felt he brought out best in Manoj in Satya and Shool and a different side of Aamir in Rangeela otherwise Aamir was typecast as lover boy. .

Shoojit Sircar

vikramaditya motwane

Also I know ppl don't like Kjo but Kjo-SRK are a pretty good duo....I mean he did get MNIK out of SRK, one of his best performances till date. Also barring KANK, he has always made SRK look so good onscreen.

Vishal Bharadwaj easily. 

Bhansali is a hit or miss. Deepika's weakest performances are in Bhansali films. Alia and Priyanka have both done much better work. Ranbir, Sonam, Hrithik gave pretty terrible performances in his films. I would say even Ranveer has better work. 

Imtiaz gives good breakout roles to actors. Ranbir, Kareena, Alia. And though he didn't direct Cocktail, that was also his script. I think Tamasha is one of Deepika's best. He seems to have lost it now though. 

I don't think directors who have one or two films count really. 

RGV, SLB, Zoya, Shoojit, Mani Ratnam, Anand L Rai, Meghna Gulzar, Imtiaz, Ayan, ….

Shinmit Amin. Great performance for Nana in Chappan. SRK in CDI is a candidate for career best for him. Ranbir's most underrated performance in Rocket Singh. And fantastic performances from the supporting cast across. 

I still don't understand how that man has not ditched a film since. 

Kaanti Shah

"Mera naam hai Bulla, rakhta huun mein........"