Kevin Conroy: Iconic voice actor Kevin Conroy, who defined Batman for generations of fans, has died at 66. Conroy was battling cancer, said an announcement from Warner Bros on Friday.
Kevin Conroy remained the voice of Batman in the acclaimed animated series and often acted opposite Mark Hamill’s Joker. His repertoire of Batman included 15 films, 400 episodes of television and two dozen video games, including the Batman: Arkham and Injustice franchises.
Conroy had no competition and played the Dark Knight maximum in the eight-decade history of Batman. “For several generations, he has been the definitive Batman,” Hamill in a statement. “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.”
Hamill also tweeted for Kevin. See the tweet below
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Dark Knight
In a statement, Warner Bros Animation said Conroy’s performance “will forever stand among the greatest portrayals of the Dark Knight in any medium”.
Conroy had no background in comics and began as a novice in voice acting for Batman. He had contrasting voices – husky, brooding and dark for Batman, light and dashing for Bruce Wayne. His inspiration he said, was the 1930s film, The Scarlet Pimpernel, about an English aristocrat who leads a double life.
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“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.”
Alcoholic father
Conroy’s own life had a role to play in some of his performances. He said his own father was an alcoholic and that his family disintegrated while he was in high school. He channelled those emotions into the 1993 animated film, Mask of the Phantasm, which revolved around Bruce Wayne’s unsettled issues with his parents.
In Finding Batman, released earlier this year, Conroy penned a comic about his unlikely journey with the character and as a gay man in Hollywood.
Conroy is survived by his husband, Vaughn C. Williams, sister Trisha Conroy and brother Tom Conroy.
An outsider
“I’ve often marvelled 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.”
His voice for Batman, he said, was one he didn’t recognise – a voice that “seemed to roar from 30 years of frustration, confusion, denial, love, yearning”.
“I felt Batman rising from deep within,” he said.
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