Actor’s gravelly delivery was the animated voice of Batman
NEW YORK — Kevin Conroy, the prolific voice actor whose gravelly delivery on “Batman: The Animated Series” was for many Batman fans the definitive sound of the Caped Crusader, has died at 66.
Conroy died Thursday after a battle with cancer, series producer Warner Bros. announced Friday.
Conroy was the voice of Batman on the acclaimed animated series that ran 1992-1996, often acting opposite Mark Hamill’s Joker. Conroy continued on as the almost exclusive animated voice of Batman, including some 15 films, 400 episodes of television and two dozen video games.
In the eight-decade history of Batman, no one played the Dark Knight more.
“For several generations, he has been the definitive Batman,” Hamill said. “It was one of those perfect scenarios where they got the exact right guy for the right part, and the world was better for it.”
Conroy’s popularity with fans made him a soughtafter personality on the convention circuit. In the often tumultuous world of DC Comics, Conroy was a mainstay and widely beloved. In a statement, Warner Bros. Animation said Conroy’s performance “will forever stand among the greatest portrayals of the Dark Knight in any medium.”
Born Nov. 30, 1955, in Westbury, New York, and raised in Westport, Connecticut, Conroy started as a well-trained theater actor. He attended Juilliard and roomed with Robin Williams. He performed in “Eastern Standard” on Broadway.
The 1980s production of “Eastern Standard,” in which Conroy played a TV producer secretly living with AIDS, had particular meaning for him. Conroy, who was gay, said at the time he was regularly attending funerals for friends who died of AIDS. He poured out his anguish nightly on stage.
In 1980, Conroy moved to Los Angeles, began acting in soap operas and booked appearances on TV series including “Cheers,” “Tour of Duty” and “Murphy Brown.” In 1991, when casting director Andrea Romano was scouting her lead actor for “Batman: The Animated Series,” she went through hundreds of auditions before Conroy came in on a friend’s recommendation and was cast immediately.
A novice in voice acting, Conroy’s Batman was husky, brooding and dark. His Bruce Wayne was light and dashing. His inspiration for the contrast, he said, came from the 1930s film, “The Scarlet Pimpernel,”
about an English aristocrat who leads a double life.
“It’s so much fun as an actor to sink your teeth into,” Conroy told The New York Times in 2016. “Calling it animation doesn’t do it justice. It’s more like mythology.”
Conroy is survived by his husband, Vaughn Williams, sister Trisha Conroy and brother Tom Conroy.
In “Finding Batman,” released this year, Conroy penned a comic about his unlikely journey with the character and as a gay man in Hollywood.
“I’ve often marveled as how appropriate it was that I should land this role,” he wrote. “As a gay boy growing up in the 1950s and ’60s in a devoutly Catholic family, I’d grown adept at concealing parts of myself.”
The voice that emerged from Conroy for Batman, he said, was one he didn’t recognize — a voice that “seemed to roar from 30 years of frustration, confusion, denial, love, yearning.”
“I felt Batman rising from deep within,” he said.