Biography


    Jeff Cannata has been working in the tech and entertainment field since the young age of 14, when he parlayed a Bay Area creative writing award into a job at the Contra Costa Times newspapers, reviewing computer and video games in a weekly syndicated column. His column even embraced the pre-Internet world of online interaction with a feature called Cannata ON-Line, which allowed readers to submit questions by dialing into a homebrew bulletin board service.

    Jeff's column continued until he moved to Santa Barbara to attend UCSB, where he earned a BFA in Theatre, graduating with Honors.

    As an actor and comedian in Los Angeles, Jeff has built a resume that illustrates range and versatility. On television, he has been seen on The Mentalist, Scandal, Shameless, Rake, and Stalker, had recurring roles on soaps like The Bold and the Beautiful, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless, as well as family fare like Nickelodeon's Just for Kicks. His numerous national and regional commercials include products as varied as Coors Light, Dodge, Coldwell Banker, Disney, and the Apple iPhone.

    Jeff also has extensive stage credits, performing seasons with the Texas and Nevada Shakespeare Festivals, The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, and northern California's Theatreworks, where he won a Dean Goodman Award for the role of Chris in Arthur Miller's All My Sons. Jeff played the title character in the world premiere comedy, The Psychic, and the rock star Johnny in Dissonance, both at Gary Marshall's Falcon Theatre.  Most recently, Jeff spent three seasons appearing at the beautiful Norris Center theatre, starring in Noises Off, Love, Sex, and the IRS, and The 39 Steps, for which he won the Desert Theatre League award for Best Actor.

    Jeff performs live comedy as well, producing and starring in The Returning Champs , an improvisational comedy troupe that has appeared at venues such as Hollywood's IO West, Santa Monica's Westside Eclectic, and the LA Comedy Festival.

    With stand up comedian Christian Spicer, Jeff created Double Jump, the live late night comedy show which has played to sold out audiences at the popular Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater, and was turned into a weekly web show for the popular Nerdist YouTube Channel.

    As co-creator and host of the wildly successful net talk show, The Totally Rad Show, Jeff became a recognized web personality and an authority on movies, video games, television, and comics for the hundreds of thousands of fans who watched the show.  TRS was honored with Webby and Podcast awards, and was called "the best weekly video podcast - period" by Wired Magazine.

    Jeff was LA correspondent for Reviews on the Run, the G4 network's daily media review program, for over 300 episodes, and has guest hosted on Daily Tech New Show, This Week in Tech, Techzilla, Breaking it Down with Catherine Reitman, and Attack of the Show, among many others.  

    Jeff co-created Weekend Confirmed with Garnett Lee for Shacknews.com, which was a long-running video game talk show widely regarded as one of the industry leaders, and was cohost of two shows on the powerhouse technology network, CNET: Always On with Molly Wood and Tomorrow Daily with Ashley Esqueda.

    Jeff helped create the media arm of the mobile game publisher, N3twork, in Los Angeles, and produced, wrote, and starred in a wide range of shows for the company.

    Jeff also hosted the Hulu Original Series, ESL: Defining Moments, an interview retrospective for the competetive e-sports scene.

    Currently, Jeff can be heard every week on the The Filmcast, a movie review and opinion show recently named one of the "30 Best Podcasts" by Complex.com, as creator and host of DLC, the video game industry talk show on the 5by5 Network listed in Entertainment Weekly's 20 "Must Listen" podcasts, and on the comedy podcast, We Have Concerns, named one of iTunes "Best of 2014" and winner of a 2016 Podcast Award for Best Entertainment Podcast.

    You'll also see Jeff alongside NFL greats, rap superstars, and sports legends as co-host of the Fan Controlled Show and in the booth color-commentating professional football games for FCF, the streaming football league that sits at the intersection of live sports and gaming.

    Finally, Jeff is considered one of the Internet's preeminent Dungeon Masters, as the driving force behind the highly regarded improvised storytelling show, The Dungeon Run. His incredibly popular storyline ran for 115 episodes, comprising over 400 hours of pulse-pounding, emotionally powerful fantasy adventure.