Kevin Conroy, the prolific voice actor whose gravely delivery on Batman: The Animated Series, was for many Batman fans the definitive sound of the caped crusader, has died at 66.
Conroy died after a battle with cancer, series producer Warner Bros announced Friday.
Conroy was the voice of Batman on the acclaimed animated series that ran from 1992-1996, often acting opposite Mark Hamill’s Joker.
He continued on as the almost exclusive animated voice of Batman, including 15 films, 400 episodes of television and two dozen video games, including the Batman: Arkham and Injustice franchises.
In the eight-decade history of Batman, no one played the Dark Knight more.
“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.”
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 began the role without any background in comics and as a novice in voice acting. His Batman was husky, brooding and dark. His Bruce Wayne was light and dashing. His inspiration for the contrasting voices, 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.”
As Conroy’s performance evolved over the years, it sometimes connected to his own life. Conroy described his own father as an alcoholic and said 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.
Conroy is survived by his husband, Vaughn C. Williams, sister Trisha Conroy and brother Tom Conroy.
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.
“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.”
The voice that emerged from Conroy 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.