A-List Meets Iron Fist: Celebrities Who Have Gotten Mixed Up With Dictators and Despots

For years, singers and actors have found friends in very dirty places, including the world's most repressed nations.

You'd think they'd know better. Or, at least, you'd think their people would know better.

Ever since this world has had stars and strong-arm dictators, the two groups have loved to hang out with each other, cavorting in gold-leafed ballrooms or in private menageries teeming with tiny giraffes.

Just this week, Hilary Swank, that respected actress who won an Oscar for a movie about tolerance, headed to what amounted to a 35th birthday bash for Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov. In case you missed your own invitation in the mail, let the State Department fill you in on the host: He is accused of being one of the world's most notorious human rights violators, with an alleged history of arson, abductions and torture against people who aren't hot celebrities.

Oh: Jean-Claude Van Damme was at the party, too.

As ill-considered as the decision may have been, Swank and Van Damme aren't alone....