Hollywood Reporter Business Manager Icon The Hollywood Reporter

May 06, 2024

Depending on whom you ask, career aptitude tests can be perceived as valuable psychological tools or dressed-up BuzzFeed quizzes. In Richard Feldstein’s case, it doesn’t matter which is true, just that the one he took decades ago at the UC Berkeley career center happened to be right.

“My father passed away when I was 11. So by the time I was entering college, I was pretty much self-sufficient financially,” Feldstein recalls, adding that he knew he’d have to find a well-paying job after graduation for that to continue. He wasn’t sure exactly what that was, though, so he took the test. “They said, ‘Oh, you’d make a pretty good accountant.’ That kind of popped off the screen to them.”

Feldstein grew up on Long Island before his family moved to L.A. when he was 14. After graduating from Berkeley with a business degree in 1973, he started his career in the audit department at Price Waterhouse in New York. He made the jump to business management two years later, after he moved back to L.A. with his wife, Sharon. Feldstein’s uncle, TV director Alan Rafkin, had been college roommates with industry icon Marshall Gelfand, and that led to a job and a new path.

“Marshall was a very good person and an excellent mentor,” says Feldstein. “But after seven years there, the last four as a partner, I decided going on my own would move my career along faster because I was starting to generate clients.” (The first Hollywood client he signed, Taxi’s Marilu Henner, is still a close friend.)

Since then, his practice has grown and diversified, in part thanks to the help of “nice referrals” from clients, entertainment lawyers, agents and managers.

“I met Rich over two decades ago through a client who was working with him. I thought he was exceptional at his job and a pleasure to deal with, so I referred him to several clients, who equally benefited from his intelligence and expertise,” says Aleen Keshishian, founder and CEO of Lighthouse Management + Media. “In addition to being brilliant at his job, he has a personal quality that makes people feel like he is a member of their family and that you can trust him. He is always available and willing to answer any question at any time.”

Alan Epstein, co-chair of Willkie Farr & Gallagher’s entertainment transactions group, lauds Feldstein’s decision-making skills. “He’s able to digest complex facts and circumstances and make clear, practical recommendations to his clients,” says Epstein. “He’s also really steady and stays calm in challenging situations. He does it all right.”

Over the years, those challenges have included handling tour logistics with a lot of moving parts. Feldstein notes, “When you’re running 25 trucks and 12 buses and charter flights, it’s quite a massive undertaking.”

He also prides himself on being able to problem-solve for clients. “I’ve done things like getting on an overnight flight to Washington, D.C., to meet with the IRS about a non-U.S. rock band that had not previously filed their taxes appropriately in this country,” he recalls. “This is before the withholding agreements became routine. We met with them at length and were able to get an agreement in place.”

Feldstein is a partner at business management behemoth NKSFB, where he’s been since 2007. His colleague Melissa Earnhart says his clients and colleagues stay with him for the long run because he’s the “best at connecting with people and making them feel valued.”

NKSFB Managing Director Mickey Segal adds, “His knowledge and expertise has provided many young staff members the ability to grow and succeed in our firm.” One of them, Mabel Tash, describes Feldstein as “truly an icon” and says he has been “an amazing mentor and partner all of these years.”

During his time in the industry, there has been significant transformation — “Computers were a huge change,” he notes — but his core philosophy has remained consistent: “I’m an old-school pretty conservative guy with my own money,” he says. “Entertainers, like ballplayers, can have a short career or a long career, one never knows. So I preach being conservative with money, with saving, with asset allocation. Some of the wealthiest clients I have out-earn their spending pattern, shall we say, but it doesn’t always work out that way.”

Feldstein adds, “I give a lot of credit to people who survive in the business management world because it keeps getting increasingly complex, not only from an advisory point of view, but the compliance work is extraordinarily more complex today than it was when I started.

As good as the business has been to me, I’m not sure if I was counseling a super bright business student that I would tell them to go into accounting because the hours, the stress and the wear and tear on relationships can be trying.” When Feldstein isn’t at the office, he’s spending time with his close-knit family. He’s been married to Sharon — whom he met while working as a camp counselor in the Poconos — for 47 years. Together, they’ve raised three children, actors Jonah Hill and Beanie Feldstein and late music manager Jordan Feldstein, and have two grandkids.

He says: “If my grandchildren want to go into business and asked me, I’d say, ‘Great. Get an MBA, go to work at Goldman Sachs for a couple of years and find out which end of the business you like and go from there.’ ”

And if that aptitude test he took at Berkeley decades ago had been inconclusive? Feldstein says, playfully, “I would be a rock star.”

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