Try as I might, I couldn't come up anyone with a more impressive resume than Henry Fonda.

John Ford
Alfred Hitchcock
Billy Wilder
Fritz Lang
John Huston
Sergio Leone
Preston Sturges
Sidney Lumet
Victor Fleming
George Cukor
William Wyler
Otto Preminger
Don Siegel
Robert Aldrich
Gene Kelly
William a Wellman
King Vidor
Joseph L Mankiewicz
Raoul Walsh
Delmer Daves
Peter Fonda

Can anyone top that? Lets see some lists.

Of modern actors, Leo has to be way up there
Spielberg
Scorsese
Cameron
Tarantino
Inarritu
Boyle
Nolan
Mendez
Rami
Luhrmann
Woody Allen
Zwick
Ridley Scott
Eastwood
McKay

—

Tom Cruise:

Spielberg
Paul Thomas Anderson
Francis Ford Coppola
Sydney Pollack
Stanley Kubrick
Ed Zwick
Ron Howard
Cameron Crowe
Reiner
DePalma
Oliver Stone
Tony Scott
Levinson
Scorsese
Ridley Scott
Michael Mann
John Woo
Robert Redford (in 2007)


and that’s without working with any big guys for at least 15 years. He did all that by age 44. He will be 60 this year.

Yeah Cruise is up there. He was actually the first person that came to mind.

Samuel L. Jackson

Spike Lee
John Landis
Martin Scorsese
Steven Spielberg
Quentin Tarantino
Tony Scott
John McTiernan
Barry Levinson
PTA
John Singleton
Steven Soderbergh
George Lucas
William Friedkin
M. Knight Shyamalan
Brad Bird
John Favreau
Joss Whedon
Adam McKay
Tim Burton

Tom Cruise:

Steven Spielberg
Edward Zwick
Martin Scorsese
Franco Zeffirelli
Stanley Kubrick
Oliver Stone
Sydney Pollack
Ridley Scott
Francis Ford Coppola
Barry Levinson
Neil Jordan
Cameron Crowe
Paul Thomas Anderson
James Mangold
John Woo
Rob Reiner
Tony Scott
Michael Mann
Brian De Palma
Robert Redford
Ron Howard

Edit: Throwing Copper beat me to it.

You can add
Milos Forman
The Hughes Brothers
John Frankenheimer
Bob Rafelson
John Boorman
Philip Kaufman
and Kenneth Branagh to his list.

Nicholson

Roger Corman
Frances Ford Coppola
Dennis Hopper
Vincente Minnelli
Bob Rafelson
Mike Nichols
Hal Ashby
Roman Polanski
Michaelangelo Antonioni
Ken Russell
Milos Forman
Arthur Penn
Elia Kazan
Himself
Stanley Kubrick
Warren Beatty
James L Brooks
John Huston
George Miller
Tim Burton
Rob Reiner
Danny DeVito
Sean Penn
Alexander Payne
Martin Scorsese

I may have been rather selective when it comes to directors. I was looking through Bruce Dern's filmography and noticed several collaborations with Roger Corman and Joe Dante, but I said, 'Nah, we're talking about great directors' and I couldn't bring myself to put them in that category. Same goes for Alexander Payne. Without those names, this would be the list for Dern:

Elia Kazan - Wild River
Alfred Hitchcock - Marnie, Family Plot
Sydney Pollack - Castle Keep, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Sam Peckinpah - Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Claude Chabrol - The Twist
John Frankenheimer - Black Sunday
Walter Hill - The Driver, Wild Bill, Last Man Standing
Francis Ford Coppola - Twixt
Quentin Tarantino - Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

I also wasn't sure if we were sticking with actors in leading roles, which is why I took a look at James Hong's filmography. He's been in a ton of movies, but if we're going with great directors, this is the list I came up with for him (excludes English voice acting for foreign language films):

Henry King - Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
Douglas Sirk - Battle Hymn
Samuel Fuller - China Gate
John Sturges - Never So Few, The Satan Bug
Robert Wise - The Sand Pebbles
Blake Edwards - The Carey Treatment
Roman Polanski - Chinatown
Ridley Scott - Blade Runner
John Carpenter - Big Trouble in Little China
Abel Ferrera - China Girl

In terms of the directors listed so far, I probably would've left off Ed Zwick, Adam McKay, Joss Whedon, Jack Nicholson, Jon Favreau, and Sean Penn. I'm not disputing that these are recognizable names (at least for film buffs), but I would stop short of calling them them great. Just MHO, of course.

Marcello Mastroianni has an impressive list (quality over quantity).

Fellini
Germi
Altman
Scola
Mikhalkov
De Sica
Visconti
Antonioni
Monicelli
Tornatore
Dassin
Boorman
Polanski
Malle
Demy
Varda


Alain Delon's got a short, but impressive list of directors:

Visconti
Melville
Antonioni
Clément
Fellini
Schlöndorff
Godard
Leconte
Varda

Robert Duvall:

Arthur Penn
Robert Altman
Peter Yates
Francis Ford Coppola
George Lucas
John Sturges
Sam Peckinpah
Sidney Lumet
Barry Levinson
Dennis Hopper
Volker Schlöndorff
Tony Scott
Joel Schumacher
Walter Hill
Ron Howard
Roland Joffé
Roger Spottiswoode
Kevin Costner
Jason Reitman
Curtis Hanson
James Gray
John Hillcoat
Scott Cooper

and some other Oscar nominated Directors I didn't include.

You missed one...

Edward Dmytryk (Warlock, 1959 - GREAT movie!)

Hey I didn't like Don't Look Up either but McKay is an Oscar Winner, directed three consecutive Best Picture nominees, directed and Executive Produced two of HBOs biggest post-GoT dramas, and before all that made two of the most beloved comedies of the 21st century in Step Brothers and Anchorman. He's an A-List director, no doubt.

He sticks out like a sore thumb amongst some of the truly great directors you listed.

Burt Lancaster

Sam Peckinpah
Bill Forsyth
Louis Malle
Robert Aldrich
Robert Altman
Bernardo Bertolucci
Luchino Visconti
John Frankenheimer
Sydney Pollack
Richard Brooks
John Sturges
John Huston
John Cassavetes
Stanley Kramer
Delbert Mann
Robert Wise
Alexander Mackendrick
Carol Reed
Fred Zinnemann
Robert Siodmak
Michael Curtiz
Jacques Tourneur
William Dieterle
Jules Dassin

I think about character actors like Mike Starr:
William Friedkin - Cruising
Barry Levinson - The Natural
Woody Allen - Radio Days, New York Stories
George Roy Hill - Funny Farm
John Hughes - Uncle Buck
Oliver Stone - Born on the Fourth of July
Kathryn Bigelow - Blue Steel
Martin Scorsese - Goodfellas
The Coen Bros - Miller's Crossing, The Hudsucker Proxy
Tim Burton - Ed Wood
Spike Lee - Clockers, Summer of Sam
Mike Nichols - The Birdcage
Bob Rafelson - Blood & Wine
Brian De Palma - Snake Eyes, The Black Dahlia
Sidney Lumet - Gloria

Kirk Douglas

Jacques Tourner
Joseph Mankiewicz
Michael Curtiz
Raoul Walsh
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Howard Hawks
Vincente Minnelli
Edward Dmytryk
Richard Fleischer
John Sturges
Stanley Kubrick
Robert Aldrich
John Huston
John Frankenheimer
Otto Preminger
Anthony Mann
Elia Kazan
Brian De Palma
John Landis
King Vidor
Burt Kennedy
Hal Needham

Even a young guy like Timothée Chalamet has already worked with a lot of the current crème dela crème of directors:

Jason Reitman
Christopher Nolan
Luca Guadagnino
Greta Gerwig
Scott Cooper
Woody Allen
David Michod
Wes Anderson
Denis Villeneuve
Adam McKay

That's not to bad for a guy who doesn't have 20 movies under his belt.

Matt Damon :
Ed Zwick
Kevin Smith (?)
Coppola
Gus Van Sant
Spielberg
Minghella
Redford
Billy Bob Thornton (?)
Soderbergh
Doug Limen (?)
Paul Greengrass
Terry Gilliam
Scorsese
Eastwood
Coen Brothers
Cameron Crowe
Neil Blomkamp
George Clooney
Nolan
Ridley Scott
Yimou Zhang
Alexander Payne
James Mangold
Taika Waititi

Gary Cooper:
Josef von Sternberg
Rouben Mamoulian
Ernst Lubitsch
Victor Fleming
Henry King
Frank Capra
Howard Hawks
William Wyler
Lewis Milestone
Frank Borzage
William Wellman
Cecil B. DeMille
Billy Wilder
Henry Hathaway
King Vidor
Michael Curtiz
Raoul Walsh
Fred Zinnemann
Robert Aldrich
Anthony Mann
Robert Rossen

Never thought I would see Hal Needham included in a list of great directors alongside Howard Hawks & Stanley Kubrick.

I always thought Alec Baldwin made a lot of smart decisions early in his career by taking smaller roles in good films made by top directors at the time;

John Hughes (She's Having a Baby)
Jonathan Demme (Married to the Mob)
Oliver Stone (Talk Radio)
Tim Burton (Beetlejuice)
Mike Nichols (Working Girl)
John McTiernan (Hunt for Red October)
Woody Allen (Alice)

It went a bit sideways after achieving Name-Above-the-Title status but he followed-up with a few other smaller roles such as;

Martin Scorsese (The Departed & The Aviator)
Woody Allen (Blue Jasmine)

I did have him on a separate list of successful, workmanlike directors, along with Raoul Walsh and Burt Kennedy. Then I decided that I was being fussy.

Where do you find these lists?

Robert De Niro, just by the sheer length of his career alone. Someone want to list them?