Kevin Conroy, best known for playing Batman in several animated movies, shows, and video games, sadly passed away at the age of 66. Diane Pershing, who voiced Poison Ivy in Batman: The Animated Series, first reported the passing of Kevin Conroy on a Facebook post. DC Comics confirmed the news and attributed it to cancer, leading to reactions from Kevin Conroy’s friends and fans from all over the world. The sadness with which Kevin Conroy’s death is being received and the number of messages sharing how impactful his Batman portrayal was to so many people prove that Kevin Conroy was the ultimate Batman actor for multiple generations.
From Batman: The Animated Series (1992) to 2022’s MultiVersus, Kevin Conroy portrayed Batman in several iterations of the character – and there was never an instance in which his Batman performance was less than perfect. In those 30 years, any DC animated movie, show, or videogame featuring the Dark Knight would become instantly promising if it announced that Kevin Conroy was playing Batman. Just the fact that audiences would get to hear Conroy’s unique Batman voice was already enough to make a Batman project exciting, which is not a criticism aimed at other several actors who have voiced Batman but a testimony of how iconic Kevin Conroy was as the Dark Knight.
Why Kevin Conroy Was Such An Incredible Batman
By the time Batman: The Animated Series premiered, Batman had already appeared both on TV and on the big screen. The Adam West Batman show introduced a lot of Batman’s mythos to the general audiences, and Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) made the caped crusader into a global star. Still, once Batman: The Animated Series premiered revealing Kevin Conroy’s Batman voice, it was as if Batman comic book readers had known for so long had suddenly been given a voice. Kevin Conroy was not the first actor to play the Dark Knight, yet he found a voice for Batman that just seemed right for the character like no other did.
From Michael Keaton to Robert Pattinson, all Batman movie actors seem to have struggled to find what Batman should sound like. Christian Bale, for example, tried a distinct raspy voice whereas Zack Snyder gave Ben Affleck’s Batman a voice modulator. Kevin Conroy, however, always made it seem like playing Batman was effortless. The scarring, imposing personality Batman had in the comics could be heard in every Batman iteration Conroy got to play, whether it was in a more realistic approach like the Arkham games or a more fun take like Justice League Action. As such, it is no coincidence that after Batman: TAS, Conroy continued playing Batman for three decades.
Kevin Conroy Truly Understood Batman & Bruce Wayne's Duality
Perhaps the reason why Kevin Conroy became the definite version of Batman for so many people is that he understood very soon the Batman and Bruce Wayne duality. Bruce Wayne and Batman are very different characters in Batman: The Animated Series, and that is because Conroy distinctly played each of them. The Animated Series Batman was not simply Bruce Wayne putting on a voice, it was a completely different force that had his own agency. Bruce Wayne’s billionaire playboy persona, on the other hand, was an act. Kevin Conroy realized that Bruce Wayne was the mask, and the truthfulness of the character should appear when he was being Batman.
More than understanding who both Batman and Bruce Wayne were, Kevin Conroy was able to adjust Batman according to the media and the story. Conroy’s Batman, despite being a very distinctive portrayal, was never one-note. For example, in The New Adventures of Batman and Robin, which can be considered Batman: The Animated Series season 4, Conroy made the distinction between Bruce Wayne and Batman even more noticeable by making Batman’s voice slightly more somber than it was in the previous seasons. That change was carried onto Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, in which Conroy’s Batman would often steal the show despite sharing the screen with DC’s most famous superheroes.
Kevin Conroy's Other Roles: More Than Just Batman
After beginning his acting career in the theater, Kevin Conroy found in the long-running soap opera Another World his first major role. Still, Conroy did not leave the theater and continued performing plays for several years, including in Broadway productions such as Eastern Standard. In 1985, Conroy joined the cast of the ABC soap opera Dynasty, in which he played Bart Fallmont for over a year. Other Kevin Conroy TV roles include Capt. Lloyd Hamilton in Ohara and Capt. Rusty Wallace in Tour of Duty. More recently, Kevin Conroy wrote an emotional comic book for DC Pride 2022 illustrating the challenges he faced as a gay man in the 80s Hollywood scene.
Finding Batman by Kevin Conroy is one of the most important DC comic books ever published, and it reveals how much Batman meant to the actor. In those 30 years in which Kevin Conroy played Batman, that admiration for the character could be felt in all of his performances – whether it was in an iconic Batman: TAS monologue or in a brief Justice League animated series appearance. Mark Hamill, who was the Joker to most of Kevin Conroy’s Batman iterations, put it best in a moving statement (via DC Comics): “It was one of those perfect scenarios where they got the exact right guy for the exact right part, and the world was better for it.”