Yale Students invite Tom Hanks to speak at Annual Class Day Ceremony

Tom Hanks is heading to Yale. The actor — who has won Academy Awards for performances in the movies Philadelphia, and Forrest Gump, and also starred in Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan — has agreed to speak to Yale University graduates this spring at the annual class day ceremony.

The class day speaker is a Yale tradition in which graduation speakers typically don’t speak at commencements. The major speech to seniors is instead given the previous day during Class Day festivities.

Former President Bill Clinton was the speaker last year. Class Day this year is May 22.

Yale spokesman Tom Conroy confirmed that students have invited Hanks and that he accepted.

Meanwhile, Hanks has revealed he still plays with children’s toys.

“I play with toys all the time. I play with the little goofy things my kids still have like cars and planes and I hold them up and imagine the same stories I did when I was a kid,” he said.

“My own toys weren’t collectibles — they went through hard use so any toy I had was eventually pounded out of existence or they broke. They went the best way any toys can — they were played with out of existence.”