One of the finest example of this will be Aparna Sen and Nandita Das.
Aparna Sen started her career as an actress and worked in Bengali and some Hindi films. It was during the film Imaan Dharam that she felt that she was reduced to useless decorative roles in big commercial films. Shashi Kapoor played her brother in the film who was starting his own production house at that time to make his kind of films- artsy, meaningful cinema. Aparna Sen narrated her script to him and he was more than ready to produce it given that his wife Jennifer Kendel plays the lead role. And thus started the career of Aparna Sen as a director with 36 Chowringee Lane, which won 3 National Awards including Best Director and Best Feature film in English for Aparna Sen. Till now she has won 9 National awards and has made path breaking films as director in English, Bengali and Hindi. Some of her remarkable movies include Paroma (2 National awards), Paromitar Ek Din (3 National awards), Mr and Mrs Iyer (4 National awards) etc.
Similarly se have Nandita Das, an actress who is in the industry for more than 4 decades but haven't really got the kind of work and appreciation that her talent deserves. She was also the one to raise the question of racism and discrimination against dark skinned actors in the industry. And she expanded her horizon by turning to filmmaking. She started off with documentaries and public service advertisement and then made her first feature film Firaaq. The film won 5 Filmfare and 2 National awards. She has made critically acclaimed films like Manto and Zwigato as well. She as worked as an actor and director in plays, given her voice for audio books, been a chair of Children Film federation etc apart from her acting roles.