Batman is one of the great roles in our popular culture. Grief, deception, that undertow of madness - it's Hamlet, but in a cape and with greater conviction.

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Several actors have played the role, but Kevin Conroy has been Batman for 24 years. According to my crude IMDb reckoning, he's played the character 258 times.* For many, myself included, Conroy is Batman. Whenever I read an issue of Batman, I hear his voice.More actors will assume the role – currently, Ben Affleck and Troy Baker have taken on the character in other high-profile productions – but what can they learn from the man who has been Batman for nearly a quarter of a century?I recently spoke to Conroy, whose latest performance as the Dark Knight comes in the recently-released Batman: The Killing Joke , and this is his advice on the role of Batman.(*That's 14 movies, 226 episodes of television, 15 video games, and three short videos, give or take.)

The Key to Playing Batman

"Well, the key to playing Batman for me has been the fact the persona of the Bat – the character of the Bat, the putting on of the mask – is not the performance.

Kevin Conroy.

The performance is Bruce Wayne. The real essence of the man is Batman. That’s when he’s his most comfortable; he’s at his most naked, most emotionally raw when he’s in the bat cave alone. When he goes out to Wayne Technologies. faces the world and puts on a suit – that’s the performance.

"Bruce Wayne is the performance element. That’s always been my key to the character, and I think when you play it that way it makes the Batman so authentic. It makes it less of an artifice. It just makes it ring true. So that it’s not just putting on this odd costume and pretending you’re someone you’re not.

"The character of the Bat evolves out of the loss of his parents as a child and the trauma that induced. He’s never resolved that pain in his life, and he spends his life avenging their deaths. The Bat is the persona he has gone into to accomplish that."

There’s Room for Interpretation

"I love the fact that Warner Brothers have for the live-action Batman changed the casting so frequently. I think it’s really interesting to see different actors in the role, to see what they bring to the character. Everyone brings something different.

Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne in Tim Burton's Batman (1989).

"And there have been so many actors that have been wonderful. I liked Michael Keaton and I like what Ben Affleck is doing with it now. But they couldn’t be more different. It’s just the same with the Joker. When I started working with Mark Hammill I thought no one would ever nail the Joker better than Mark Hamill, and then I saw Heath Ledger, and he knocked it out of the park in just a different way.

"There are so many valid ways of playing a role. It’s really fun to watch different actors do it. So I thought it was a really interesting choice that WB made to have different actors do the live-action character."

But… Batman Doesn’t Kill

"Personally I love the fact that Batman – in the stories I’ve done, and the way he’s been rendered by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini, the people I’ve worked with most closely – he never kills anybody. He doesn’t cross that line. Batman is not a killer.

Ben Affleck in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).

"He puts them into Arkham Asylum, which is what is so brilliant about the Arkham Games – someone realised, 'my god, all these incredible villains are all in the same institution – let’s get a video game in there'. It’s a brilliant idea. But the fact that Batman never kills anyone – I loved that fact.

"In the most recent live action movie, that seems to have been a line that was crossed and it’s not one I’m particularly comfortable with."

Embrace the Scrutiny

"The challenge for me is not so much how it evolved, as to how to keep it fresh and authentic and present and real over 25 years. The thing I’ve discovered is the audience for Batman is the most loyal and the most passionate you’re going to find for any franchise. They know everything about the character. They understand him.

Christian Bale in The Dark Knight trilogy.

"Batman is such a psychological portrait. He’s almost this anti-hero; he has this darkness about him, and people really relate to that. They relate to his flawed character. There’s an ownership the audience feels about the character, and once I established that voice 25 years ago, the obligation I had was not to deviate and keep it consistent.

"If I ever lied, or if I ever phoned it in, they would be all over me. I would be crucified on the internet. They would hear it in a second. The challenge for me is how to keep him fresh."

Make Every Line Count

"Batman is a man of few words. So when you’re the voice actor doing the role you really have very few opportunities to sketch the character. Because most of it is action. He’s the strong silent type. There aren’t a lot of moments where he expresses his emotions. So you have to learn to nuance the few lines you have to flesh out the character."

Conroy's point here about nuance is perfectly illustrated by one of my favourite Batman moment. It's from Mask of the Phantasm: Bruce has fallen in love, and for the first time can see a life in which Batman plays no part. The notion of happiness, however, creates a crisis – Bruce believes he's turning his back on his parents.

Here's the scene:

"Please, I need it to be different now. I know I made a promise. but I didn't see this coming. I didn't count on being happy. Please, tell me that it's okay."

Conroy, aided by a wonderful script, allows Bruce to become a child once again: looking up at Thomas and Martha (well, their tomb, to be sadly precise), he asks to break a promise. He's asking for approval and reassurance that cannot be given. Thanks to Conroy, it's simultaneously desperate, naive, and melancholic. In short, it's what Conroy means by nuance.

How to Be Batman in the Justice League

"Well the challenge, and there is a real challenge in it…. Then you translate that into an episode where you have seven leading characters and you’re sharing the stage with seven other people.

Affleck faces the challenge of playing Batman in the forthcoming Justice League movie.

"In Justice League, there are often episodes where I’ll have four or five lines, where in Batman: The Animated Series I was used to having the entire script to create a portrait of the character. When you only have a few lines it’s much more difficult.

"The temptation is to over-act because you feel such an obligation to completely flesh-out the character in just the two or three lines you have, and you have to resist that temptation and trust the fact that you know the character so well. That if you just inhabit him, and speak truthfully, it will resonate with the audience. But it is harder to do because the temptation is push it when you’re sharing the stage with lots of other actors."

Batman: The Killing Joke is available on DVD and Blu-ray now.

Daniel is IGN's UK Managing Editor. You can be part of the world's most embarrassing cult by following him on IGN and Twitter