Venida Evans

Venida Evans is an American actress whose work spans stage, film, television, and commercial advertising. Born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, she was raised in Detroit, where she attended Southwestern High School before going on to study at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Prior to her acting career, Evans served as an enlisted member of the United States Air Force.

In 1972, Evans relocated from Detroit to New York City to pursue acting. To support herself during that pursuit, she took a job as a theater usher on Broadway, a position she held until 1999, when she transitioned to acting full-time. In a 2009 interview with The Detroit News, she noted that she remained prepared to return to ushering if necessary, quipping, "I still know how to say 'Five rows up and six seats over.'"

Her Broadway career spanned from 1978 to 2015 and included appearances in The Wiz, Airline Highway, and The Amen Corner. On screen, Evans appeared in a small role as a nurse in the 1981 film Only When I Laugh and later in the 1998 Merchant Ivory Productions film Side Streets. Her television credits include multiple episodes of the NBC series Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as well as Third Watch and New York Undercover. She also held a recurring role on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light, playing a grandmother named Loretta.

Beginning in 2008, Evans became widely recognized for portraying a character called "The Muse" in a series of IKEA television commercials produced by the ad agency Deutsch New York. The character, an invisible older woman, was described by Deutsch New York's chief creative officer Peter Nicholson as "the voice of reason and support and your consciousness of why you made a good purchase of an Ikea product," adding that she possessed a "Mary Poppins quality." While some viewers interpreted the character as a ghost, Evans stated that she never intended the role to be creepy. The campaign drew commentary from critics, including Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ellen Gray, who compared Evans's Muse to Bruce Willis's character in The Sixth Sense.

Evans credited the IKEA campaign with accelerating her career. In a 2009 interview with The Detroit News, she described the renewed attention as both "scary but exciting," characterizing herself as a "flavor of the month" after more than thirty years working as an actress. On May 21, 2009, she appeared on ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, winning $8,000. As of April 2009, her father, born on April 10, 1912, was 97 years old; her mother is deceased.