Child stars to college sweethearts

By Kelsey Thomas, Staff Writer thomask15@up.edu

Her name is Megan Street. She is a freshman, has a fraternal twin and is from Wilsonville, Ore.

His name is Christian Giammichele. He is a freshman, has an identical twin and is from Ventura, Calif.

It was love at first wail. Almost.

After the two realized they appeared in the same film as babies, it was only a few months before they fell in love, got promise rings and started spending as much time as possible together.

At 8 a.m. on the first day of school, Street and Giammichele walked into fine arts individually, heads filled more with questions and nerves than romance.

When asked to share their name and an interesting fact about themselves for an icebreaker activity, Giammichele chose his go-to. In 1994, he starred in an opening scene of the movie "Junior" by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger dreams he finds a baby, played by Giammichele, on a table in a library and picks him up.

"He squeezes a bag and I fake pee all over him," Giammichele said.

Meanwhile, couches full of crying babies appear behind Schwarzenegger and Giammichele.

One of the babies in the front row is Street. Realizing they had been in the same movie, Street was shocked.

"I didn't really say anything [when he shared his fact] because I had this feeling that he did a background check on me just to freak me out," Street said.

When Street's turn to share an interesting fact came, she turned to Giammichele and spoke to him for the first time.

"I was like, 'I was in that movie too - in the same scene,'" Street said. "We both freaked out."

Days later, Giammichele and Street started getting breakfast after class. Weeks later, they began dating. Two weeks ago, they bought promise rings together.

"He's a dork, but that's my favorite thing," Street said. "He's really goofy and obnoxious."

Giammichele's goofiness was evident in his attempt to get her number early on.

When no one was sitting next to Street in Fine Arts one day, Giammichele took the opportunity to sit down and get her help filling out a sheet assigned to him in his freshman workshop class, where he was supposed to get names and numbers of classmates.

When he texted her the next day, it had nothing to do with Fine Arts.

"It's so embarrassing now," Giammichele said. "It seemed really smooth at the time. I was like 'this is perfect, she won't know anything.'"

"I knew exactly what he was doing," Street said.

Not that she's complaining.

Their first off-campus date last November included Chipotle, frozen yogurt and "Wreck it Ralph."

"I'm a Disney junkie," Street said.

Neither of them are allowed to have a car on campus, so most of the time they just hang out on campus and make each other laugh.

"Sometimes when we're feeling obnoxious we'll just start talking in Spanish and using high pitched voices," Street said. "I make fun of his fingers because they're sausage fingers. They're shorter than mine."

Giammichele said he loves Street's personality and laugh.

"Her laugh is infectious," Giammichele said. "It's ridiculous."

The couple received approval from both their twins and their parents. Giammichele spent Thanksgiving with Street, and he met the whole family.

"Yes. Whole family," Giammichele said. "Everyone."

Giammichele's twin attends University of California Santa Barbara. Street met him along with the rest of Giammichele's family while visiting her dad in California over winter break.

"Christian's twin brother is amazing," Street said.

"And annoying," Giammichele said.

Street's twin sister and roommate Sarah said the way her sister met Giammichele is comical and unbelievable.

"It's one of those things that our family members joke about a lot," she said. "We joke that they should basically get married now."

"Junior" is not Street and Giammichele's only on-screen performance. Twin babies are in high demand at casting calls because babies can only be in a shoot for a limited time.

Street and her twin sister were also in "The Little Princess," although the scene they used featured her sister.

Today, Street and her sister could no longer share a role in a movie.

"We're both big readers and kinda nerdy, but we don't look anything alike," Street said. "We don't even look like twins."

Giammichele was also in a number of TV shows with his brother. Although Giammichele and his twin look alike, their personalities are anything but identical.

"We were a lot more similar when we were younger and we did everything together," Giammichele said. "But as we've grown older we've gone our separate ways. It's like you develop your identity and I'll develop mine."

Although Street is glad "Junior" brought her and Giammichele together, she is not boasting about her movie star career anytime soon.

"It's basically about [Arnold Schwarzenegger] getting pregnant, which is really creepy," Street said. "I don't like admitting I was in a movie like that. I don't know what my parents were thinking."