Thomas Daniel "Tim" Conway was an Emmy Award-winning American actor, voice actor, comedian, writer, director, and producer, who has worked in sitcoms, sketch comedies, films, and shows and even some along with Ernest Borgnine and Joe Flynn in McHale's Navy. He voiced Barnacle Boy in the Nickelodeon animated series SpongeBob SquarePants while the late Ernest Borgnine voiced Mermaid Man; the two worked together until Borgnine's death in 2012.
Early life and education[]
Conway was born Thomas Daniel Conway on December 15, 1933, in Willoughby, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, and grew up in nearby Chagrin Falls, the son of Daniel and Sophia (née Murgoiu) Conway. Daniel was a groomer for polo ponies. His father, who immigrated to the United States in 1927, was born in Ireland to Scottish parents, and his mother was a first-generation Romanian-American.
Conway's legal name was Thomas, though he was also referred to as Toma, the Romanian language analog, and was typically known as Tom; he changed his stage name to Tim near the beginning of his acting career (quipping he "dotted the O") to avoid confusion with British actor Tom Conway.
Conway attended Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, where he majored in television and radio and was a disc jockey, and a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. When he graduated, Conway enlisted in the United States Army, where he served between 1956 and 1958.