Chavez admirers panned

The saccharine conventions of showbusiness were dispensed with when the Hollywood actress Maria Conchita Alonso was asked if she was pleased about her former co-star Sean Penn's recent Oscar victory.

"He's an amazing actor. I can't take that away from him," she said of Penn, who worked with her on the 1988 film Colors.

"It's just that he has no clue at all what's going on in Venezuela. He's been praising Hugo Chavez, who is a dictator and a killer. He should shut up about what he doesn't know."

Alonso, who was raised in Venezuela, was upset by a glowing article that Penn had written for The Nation magazine about her homeland's charismatic but increasingly dictatorial left-wing President. For the first time, a Hollywood insider was saying what much of America thinks: left-wing luvvies in the movie business should wake up to the real nature of their hero.

Chavez has criticised Hollywood as a medium of American "cultural imperialism". And Penn, who since his Oscar-winning performance in Milk has become a vociferous gay rights activist, is also open to allegations of hypocrisy. Chavez's hero, Fidel Castro, executed gay men, and once declared: "In this country [Cuba] there are no homosexuals."

Last week Benicio Del Toro made headlines when he took tea with Chavez. The actor, in Venezuela to promote Steven Soderbergh's film Che, told journalists that his host was "nice" and that he'd "had a good time". Del Toro's comments caused apoplexy on the political right in the US, but lately even Democrats have been perturbed by Chavez's intolerance of media criticism and political opposition.

Last month, through a referendum, Chavez managed to alter the constitution to allow him to run for as many terms of office as he likes, and has caused further ructions by nationalising a rice mill owned by the US agricultural giant Cargill after complaining it was not producing enough at government regulated prices. He has frequently threatened to halt all oil exports to the US, and to seize the assets of American petroleum firms with operations in Venezuela.

* Where Hugo, I go

Benicio Del Toro: Took tea with Hugo Chavez in Caracas.

Oliver Stone: Is currently filming an authorised biopic of Chavez.

Danny Glover: Was given US$18 million by Chavez in 2006 to make a film about Haiti's 19th-century leader, Toussaint Louverture.

Harry Belafonte: Appeared on a platform in 2007 with Chavez to call George W. Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world".

- INDEPENDENT