Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (L) and actor Sean Penn (R) listen to an explanation from a doctor during a visit to a hospital on Aug. 3, 2007 in San Cristoba, Venezuela.
- [STR/AFP/Getty Images]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (R) speaks alongside actor Sean Penn (L) after a meeting in Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on March 5, 2011. Penn, who was visiting Caracas, thanked Chavez for the funding that his government gave to an NGO based in Haiti that assists the victims of the earthquake that shook the country in January 2010.
- [JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and actor Sean Penn speak to the press at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on Feb. 16, 2012.
- [LEO RAMIREZ/AFP/Getty Images]

President elect Hugo Chavez (L) speaks with former US President Jimmy Carter in Venezuela's Circulo Militar on Dec. 7, 1998.
- [/AFP/Getty Images]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (R) confers with former US president Jimmy Carter (L) on Jan. 26, 2004, in Caracas. It was Carter's seventh visit to Venezuela.
- [EGILDA GOMEZ/AFP/Getty Images]

Puerto Rican actor Benicio Del Toro (R) and Mexican actor Demián Bechir answer questions to journalists after a meeting with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez at the Presidential Palace in Caracas on March 4, 2009.
- [THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez shows a copy of 'Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project)' by US left-wing philosopher Noam Chomsky during his address to the 61st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 20, 2006.
- [DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images]

Actor Kevin Spacey (R) prepares to enter the Miraflores presidential palace for a meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sept. 24, 2007.
- [JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images]

Boxing promoter Don King (L) confers with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (R) at the Miraflores presidential palace on Feb. 2, 2004, in Caracas.
- [/AFP/Getty Images]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (R) decorates US civil rights activist the Rev. Jesse Jackson with the Liberator's Order prior to a press conference at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on Aug. 25, 2005. Jackson, on a three-day visit to Venezuela to meet Chavez, politicians and community leaders, also called on President George W. Bush to issue 'a swift rejection' of televangelist Pat Robertson's statement calling for Chavez's assassination - which he described as 'repugnant, inmoral and illegal.'
- [/AFP/Getty Images]