The architect then turned to me and asked 'What does it feel like to be Santa Claus because that's just what happened here." He adds: "So, from this back kitchen: 'I am vengenace, I am the night, I am Batman!' There's this long pause and you hear from the back: 'Holy f**k that is Batman!' And suddenly the whole place was laughing. Not wanting to let the good people down, Conroy decided to recite his classic Batman slogan. Then somebody else said: 'Make him prove him' and I was like 'oh, this is good.'" "There's this long silence and you hear 'bulls**t' from the back of the place. "So this guy goes into the dining hall and this is the first week after the attack and there is just this sombre sadness and yoi hear the guy go, 'guys, guys, you're not gonna believe whose been cooking your dinners. The man then became over-excited after he realised who he was talking to. What's your day job?' I said I do voices mostly." Conroy says: "In the middle of the night, 3 nights into this, this one guy goes 'so, my day job is I'm an architect. The actor begins the story by recalling a conversation he had with a fellow volunteer who was an architect. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter In the film, Conroy recounts a story of when he was helping out at a food relief station in New York City a week after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The voice-over great was so well known for playing Batman, that despite looking nothing like the classic depiction of Bruce Wayne at all his voice was so transcendent that you knew exactly who he was when he opened his mouth.Ī brilliant example of this phenomenon comes in the 2013 documentary I Know That Voice which looks at the careers of some of the world's best voice actors including Mark Hamill, Hank Azaria, Seth Green and of course Conroy. Conroy then went on to voice Batman in more than 400 episodes of television and numerous animated movies and video games. He left behind a remarkable legacy as the DC superhero having voiced the Caped Crusader in 1992 on the widely acclaimed Batman: The Animated Series. Watch the full video for more on how Kevin Conroy's gift as a voice actor was in finding the emotional man beneath the unstoppable Bat.The iconic voice actor Kevin Conroy, best known for playing Batman for 30 years died on Thursday aged 66. There are many moments over the course of the series where echoes of Bruce bleed into Batman’s voice, especially when dealing with his enemies. They weren’t two people occupying the same body, but merely different shades of a person still struggling to make sense of a senseless tragedy decades after the fact. As Batman is doing his thing in the Batcave, Alfred fields a call from Lucius, and Conroy’s voice immediately shoots up an octave and loses all its gruff edge as he mentally puts on a different mask.īut the real beauty of Conroy’s performance is that it was never simply about playing Bruce Wayne or Batman. There’s a scene in the episode “Heart of Steel Part 1” that captures this perfectly. Watching Batman: The Animated Series, it’s easy to see how even Bruce’s friends like Lucius Fox and Commissioner Gordon could remain blissfully unaware of his nighttime antics. One of the true hallmarks of Conroy’s Batman performance was his talent for drawing such a distinct line between his Bruce Wayne and Batman voices. This is how Conroy’s made humanity the most important tool in Batman’s crimefighting arsenal. With only the power of his voice, Conroy gave us the most nuanced and fully realized version of the Caped Crusader ever to appear outside the comics. It’s no exaggeration to say Conroy defined the voice of Batman for several generations of fans, from his original work on groundbreaking Batman: The Animated Series to follow-up shows like Batman Beyond and Justice League to the critically acclaimed Arkham games.īat fans can and will debate on which actor best portrayed the character in live-action, but the simple truth is that Conroy was Batman. The superhero world was dealt a terrible blow with the news that actor Kevin Conroy has passed away at age 66.
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