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Kevin Conroy, the prolific voice actor whose gravelly delivery on “Batman: The Animated Series” was for many Batman fans the definitive sound of the Caped Crusader, has died at 66.

Conroy died Thursday 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 to 1996, often acting opposite Mark Hamill’s Joker. Conroy continued on as the almost exclusive animated voice of Batman, including some 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.”

“He will always be my Batman,” Hamill said.

Conroy’s popularity with fans made him a sought-after personality on the convention circuit. In the often tumultuous world of DC Comics, Conroy was a mainstay and widely beloved. In a statement, Warner Bros. Animation said Conroy’s performance “will forever stand among the greatest portrayals of the Dark Knight in any medium.”

“Kevin brought a light with him everywhere, whether in the recording booth giving it his all or feeding first responders during 9/11 or making sure every fan who ever waited for him had a moment with their Batman,” said Paul Dini, producer of the animated show. “A hero in every sense of the word.”

Born in Westbury, New York, and raised in Westport, Connecticut, Conroy started out as a well-trained theatre actor. He attended Juilliard and roomed with Robin Williams. After graduating, he toured with John Houseman’s acting group, the Acting Company. He performed in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Public Theater and in “Eastern Standard” on Broadway. At the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California, he performed in “Hamlet.”

The 1980s production of “Eastern Standard,” in which Conroy played a TV producer secretly living with AIDS, had particular meaning to him. Conroy, who was gay, said at the time he was regularly attending funerals for friends who died of AIDS. He poured out his anguish nightly on stage.

In 1980, Conroy moved to Los Angeles, began acting in soap operas and booked appearances on TV series including “Cheers,” “Tour of Duty” and “Murphy Brown.” In 1991, when casting director Andrea Romano was scouting her lead actor for “Batman: The Animated Series,” she went through hundreds of auditions before Conroy came in. He was there on a friend’s recommendation — and cast immediately.

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.

“Andrea came in after the recording and grabbed me in a hug,” Conroy told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “Andrea said, ‘I don’t know where you went, but it was a beautiful performance.’ She knew I was drawing on something.”

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 at 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.”

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer

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The United Methodist Church moved toward becoming more progressive and LGBTQ-affirming during US regional meetings this month that included the election of its second openly gay bishop. Conservatives say the developments will only accelerate their exit from one of the nation’s largest Protestant denominations.

Each of the UMC’s five US jurisdictions — meeting separately in early November — approved similarly worded measures aspiring to a future of church where “LGBTQIA+ people will be protected, affirmed, and empowered.”

They also passed non-binding measures asking anyone to withdraw from leadership roles if they’re planning to leave the denomination soon — a category that almost entirely includes conservatives moving toward the exits.

The denomination still officially bans same-sex marriage and the ordination of any “self-avowed, practicing homosexual,” and only a legislative gathering called the General Conference can change that.

But this month’s votes show growing momentum — at least in the American half of the global church — to defy these policies and seek to reverse them at the next legislative gathering in 2024.

Supporters and opponents of these measures drew from the same metaphor to say their church is either becoming more or less of a “big tent,” as the United Methodists have long been described as a theologically diverse, mainstream denomination.

“It demonstrates that the big tent has collapsed,” said the Reverend Jay Therrell, president of the conservative Wesleyan Covenant Association, which has been helping churches that want to leave the denomination.

“For years, bishops have told traditionalists that there is room for everyone in the United Methodist Church,” he said. “Not one single traditionalist bishop was elected. Moreover, we now have the most progressive or liberal council of bishops in the history of Methodism, period.”

But Jan Lawrence, executive director of Reconciling Ministries Network, which works toward inclusion of Methodists of all sexual orientations and gender identities, applauded the regional jurisdictions. She cited their LGBTQ-affirming votes and their expansion of the racial, ethnic and gender diversity of bishops.

Jurisdictions elected the church’s first Native American and Filipino American bishops, with other landmark votes within specific regions, according to United Methodist News Service.

“It is a big tent church,” Lawrence said. “One of the concerns that some folks expressed is that we don’t have leadership in the church that reflects the diversity of the church. So this episcopal election doesn’t fix that, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

Bishop Cedrick Bridgeforth, elected in the Western Jurisdiction meeting, agreed. He is the first openly gay African-American man to be elected bishop. The vote comes six years after the Western Jurisdiction elected the denomination’s first openly lesbian bishop, Karen Oliveto of the Mountain Sky Episcopal Area.

The LGBTQ-affirming resolutions point “to the alignment of the denomination more with the mainstream of our country,” Bridgeforth said. “It can also help us begin to centre our conversations where we have unity of purpose, rather than centering on divisions.”

Bridgeforth will lead churches in the Greater Northwest Area, which includes churches in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and small parts of Montana and Canada. He said he has always worked across ideological lines in his administrative duties and would continue to do so.

“I have used our differences as an opportunity for us to come together,” he said. “It creates more space for a different kind of conversation than, ‘That’s different, that’s bad, we can’t be together.’” If some churches under his jurisdiction do choose to leave the United Methodist Church, Bridgeforth said he would help them make that transition.

“I would not want anybody to be where they don’t want to be,” he said.

Progressive groups have said the church should be open to appointing bishops and other clergy, regardless of sexual orientation, who show they have the gifts for ministry and a commitment to serve the church.

Conservatives, however, say the church needs to abide by its own rules.

“I am sure Bishop Bridgeforth is a person of sacred worth, but he does not meet the qualifications to hold the office of elder, much less bishop, and should not have been elected,” Therrell said.

At least 300 US congregations have left the denomination this year, according to United Methodist News Service. Hundreds more are in the process of leaving, and Therrell predicted that number would be in the low thousands by the end of 2023. Overseas conferences in Bulgaria and Slovakia have ended their affiliation with the denomination, and churches in Africa are considering it, he said.

Many are bound for the newly formed conservative denomination, the Global Methodist Church.

The UMC is a worldwide denomination. American membership has declined to about 6.5 million, from a peak of 11 million in the 1960s. Overseas membership soared to match or exceed that of the US, fuelled mostly by growth and mergers in Africa. Overseas delegates have historically allied with American conservatives to uphold the church’s stances on sexuality.

Support for a compromise measure that would have amicably split the denomination, negotiated in 2020, fell apart after that year’s legislative General Conference was postponed three times due to the pandemic. The next General Conference is now scheduled to begin in April 2024 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

A vote by a 2019 General Conference was the latest of several in recent decades that reinforced the church’s ban on gay clergy and marriage. But that vote also prompted many local conferences to elect more liberal and centrist delegates, whose influence was felt in this month’s regional votes.

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By PETER SMITH Associated Press

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Neymar is unsure whether he will get the opportunity to represent Brazil at another World Cup after this year’s tournament in Qatar.

The Paris Saint-Germain forward will appear at his third World Cup later this month, where he will be looking to lead Brazil to their first triumph at the tournament for 20 years.

Neymar will be 34 years old by the time the 2026 World Cup begins, and with little certainty whether he will feature in that tournament, he hopes to cement a place in football history by leading Brazil to glory in Qatar.

“I’ll play like it’s the last,” Neymar told Globo. “I talk to my father, we always talk. [I’ll] play each game as if it were the last because you don’t know what will happen tomorrow.

“I can’t guarantee that I’ll play another [World] Cup. I honestly don’t know. I’ll play like it’s the last.

“Maybe I’ll play another one, maybe not. It depends. There’s going to be a coaching change [when Tite steps down after the World Cup] and I don’t know if that coach will like me.

“I’ve already built a long history in the national team and, for sure, I want to finish it well.

“I’m happy. I like to play football and I like to win. I like to be better than I am every day. I like helping my team-mates, which is the main thing. I hope my name is engraved in football history.”

Asked about Brazil’s chances of glory in Qatar, Neymar added: “I want to play this cup, dedicate myself to it, because I’m sure we have the potential to go very far.

“Although a lot of people don’t believe in us, we will prove otherwise. I see that this national team has a lot of good things, and I see that we can go very far.”

Since making his World Cup debut on home soil in 2014, Neymar has been directly involved in 42 per cent of Brazil’s 19 goals in the tournament (six goals, two assists).

Meanwhile, the 30-year-old has scored 75 times in 121 appearances for Brazil, putting him just two goals short of Pele’s Selecao record of 77.

While Neymar will be expected to trouble that record when Brazil face Serbia, Switzerland and Cameroon in their Group G campaign in Qatar, he says he is not driven by the desire to better Pele’s feats.

“It’s more than I imagined, than I dreamed. I never thought about numbers, I never wanted to overtake anyone, to break a record. I always just wanted to play football,” Neymar said.

“Pele is the reference. Pele is football. Pele is practically everything for our country. The respect and admiration I have for him is enormous.”

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