If I look at bollywood, dileep kumar and sanjeev kumar emerged as great actors initially.
Both actors were excelled in doing different types of characters, time period when overacting is considered as superior acting, both actors have given lots of performances still looks very natural acting.
In south india things was different, during 60s, 70s, over the top acting was considered as very superior
Main stream actors like sivaji ganesan and rajkumar used to that type of acting, they changed this acting style from 80s, when people started liking natural acting,
Malayalam actor sathyan master was another example of such type of acting
These actors use to do over the top acting and celebrated as great actor.
Telugu cinema had svr and anr, both actors were the capable of doing over dramatic and natural acting and also excelled in doing different types of characters.
In the 80s Indian cinema started changing completely, trained actors from Institute shown very realistic acting.
Nasurdhin saah and ompuri increased acting standards of acting cinema, now over the top acting became irrelevant.
From 80s Indian cinema had seen lots of character artists who can be treated as very superior actors.
Tamil cinema, after MR radha, seen lots of great character artists like, Raghuvaran, prakash raj, naseer and ms bhaskar.
From Hindi cinema , paresh rawal, manoj Vajpayee, nana patekar and nawaz are considered as superior actor.
Telugu cinema had kota srinivas rao
Malayalam cinema had, barath gopi, murli, Jagthy sree kumar and kalabhavan mani.
Indian cinema also seen actors who are entertaining stars and also superior actors
Mohanlal, kamal and mamooty are the best example, who shown realistic acting in different types of characters and also emerged as biggest stars of their film industries because of their acting abilities.
Actors like amir khan seen stardom at international level, because of his great acting abilities.
Some actors seen great Stardom because of acting their acting abilities, but for a short time, like vikram and surya