Batman, Forever!
This is a dedication page to commemorate the brilliant actor who'se distinctive voice brought to life a beloved animated hero that has raised and inspired a generation. This page is dedicated to Kevin Conroy the one and forever Batman.
Early Years
Keving Conroy was born on November 30th 1955, in Westbury, New York. He was raised and brought into a very loving and large family. He grew up with two other siblings his parents primarily raised all of the children in a catholic household. Growing up with his family Kevin was able to live a fullfilling life with his parents and siblings. This despite the challenges of living with his father who battled severaly with alcoholism all his life. Unfortunately for most of his life they never we close with each other and were estranged up until his fathers death.
Despite being at odds with his father Kevin continued to thrive in school with his siblings and had a developing early interest in theater as he attended school. This love of acting would continue to shape his later life as he finished high school and later progressed in his early adulthood.
Later years in New York
Eventually life for Kevin started to take hold for him and he had an opportunity in his twenties to study at Juliard acting school. And with that opportunity, in his twenties decided to move to New York City. While there in school he rubbed elbows with such fellow students like Kelsey Grammar and Robin Williams.
This allowed him to continue to hone his craft and figure out further areas of acting that interested him and allowed him to provide help and support to fellow actors. His tutelage continued under the legendary director John Houseman. This allowed him to finish Juliard school in 1978m and with his completion it allowed him to be invited by Houseman to travel with his theater company The Acting House.
This was where he blossomed the most because it allowed him to really sink into roles that he enjoyed such as King Lear and other roles. This played a big part in eventually choosing the roles that he wanted to get into as he moved to the next phase of his career.
Television years and becoming Batman
After a few years of touring with the theater company this was in the time period of the early 80's and this inspired him to work on transitioning over to television roles. The steps that he took to become the actor he is now, allowed him to explore other areas of his life. This was during a difficult time as he was working but also had a lifestyle and being active in the gay community. The timing of all this wasn't very helpful either since this was happening during the big AIDS epidemic.
Kevin, found it hard to reconcile his lifestyle being active in the gay community but also how that would affect his roles that he could find in acting. One of the big breaks that he landed was in a program called Covenant. This was in 1985 and he was able to leverage this success that held him in that program for a few years. During this time he was able to land other roles in such popular shows of that time such as Dynasty, Search for Tomorrow, and Lolita. During this time it helped him to be able to land some guest star appearances in such popular shows like Matlock, Cheers, and Murphy Brown.
His big break came in the early 90's when his agent had invited him to audition for a voice acting role for an animated cartoon series. The original position that he was trying out for was for a supporting role as Harvey Bullock. The show would later come to be known as a noir re-imagining of Batman. Spearheading the change and the iteration were the producers Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski.
They had asked Kevin to come in and try an iteration for the main role of Batman. Outside of this opportunity Kevin had hardly any experience with Batman before, outside of the Adam West. His rendition of the main character is what eventually won him the lead role. From that time forward his became notorious for donning the role and the mantle of Batman.
Kevin had mentioned in a few interviews that the inspiration of Batman was channeled through a few different roles that he had played in his earlier acting career. It came from a mixture of his professional Shakespearian roles he reprised, but also from other personal experiences he was going through with his younger life. A lot of the inspiration and persona that came from him finding who the animated Batman is came a lot from his understanding of Michael Keaton's character and acting of who Batman was. The actual secret identity of Batman was Bruce Wayne, who he really was was Batman himself as the crime fighter and the heavy mantle that he wears every night.
This eventually would prove to be a defining role for Kevin and he played many iterations of Batman through several shows like the New Animated adventures of Batman, several iterations of the Justice League, and many video game adaptations. This eventually transformed him as the quintissential voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne. Kevin continued to live an authentic life with himself and his family. Staying true to who he was while still staying strong in spite of the difficulties of battling cancer. He sadly succumbed to his battle with this condition in 2022, and we lost a timeless part of our culture. We will forever remember Kevin as the one and only Batman that has been with us all our lives. We miss you Kevin, rest in peace...
