All About Aldis Hodge’s Daughter (and Why He Says She ‘Saved’ His Life)

Aldis Hodge takes inspiration for his starring role in Prime Video’s Cross from being a real-life father to his daughter.

The actor is private about his personal life, keeping the identities of his wife and daughter quiet and off his social media. Though he protects them from the spotlight, he’s not shy about sharing how life has changed since his daughter was born.

“My daughter is IT,” he told ETalk in November 2024. “She has been the joy, the light of my life. Being a father is the greatest thing … She has transformed and saved my life, in many ways.”

Hodge often speaks about how his approach to acting and working in general has changed since he became a father, and he couldn’t be more proud of his little girl.

“You can give me 15 Oscars right now and ask me what’s my proudest, happiest moment — it’s always going to be about my daughter,” the Black Adam star told Essence in October 2024. “Whatever job I do, it has to support or supplement the future I’m trying to build for her.”

Here’s everything to know about Aldis Hodge’s daughter.

Aldis Hodge’s daughter was born premature

The Parallel star kept his marriage and the birth of his first child quiet, but he shared some insight into her first few months in an October 2022 interview with GQ.

“When I had my daughter, she was born early,” he shared while showing off a gold foil heart on the cover of his sketching notebook. “She was in the NICU for like two months and they used golden hearts to tape their wires and breathing apparatus to ’em. So this is one for my daughter.”

He went on to say that she represents “strength, belief and hope” for him after overcoming her early health issues.

She is his mini-me

While Hodge doesn’t share photos of his daughter’s face on social media, he gave fans a hint as to what she might look like.

In a February 2025 visit to The Jennifer Hudson Show, host Jennifer Hudson pulled up a photo of Hodge from when he appeared in Die Hard as a child, and he immediately saw a striking resemblance between himself and his little girl.

“Ay! Out here looking like my daughter!” he said with a laugh.

She is multi-talented, like her dad

Hodge has many interests, from acting and playing violin to watch-making and running an animation studio, and his daughter seems to be following in his footsteps with her wide array of passions.

“I got a three-nager. She loves music, she loves singing, anytime a Disney movie’s on she’s getting it,” he told Hudson in February 2025. “Right now she’s really hooked on The Lion King so she sings all those songs.”

She also loves playing guitar and might have a career as a prosecutor in the future. “My daughter is already in the space of negotiating and debating,” he told Ebony in April 2025. “All two feet high, telling me that she runs things.”

Hodge says she inspired one of his characters

Hodge plays detective Alex Cross — a crime-fighting single dad — on his hit Prime Video show Cross, and has said that being a real-life father has helped him hone the character.

“I played parents before, and it was always from a perspective of, ‘Oh, this is what my mother did for me, so this is how I think this would go’ — the idea of a parent,” he told Ebony in April 2025.

“Now that I am a parent, my relationship with my TV children is more authentic,” he shared. “What I get to reflect is a bit more earnest, honest and intimate in that I know what this really means to me.”

As a producer on the show, Hodge is proud to use his lived experience to “show the truth of what it means to be a Black father” as he works to “dispel the myths and the narratives that we’re not in the home, or that we don’t care about our kids.”

She is a fan of his projects

Hodge’s daughter has inspired him beyond his role in Cross. In November 2024 he shared that she’s a huge fan of one of his other projects during a visit to The Kelly Clarkson Show.

“She’s really big on this show on Disney Jr. called Ariel: Mermaid Tales,” he told Kelly Clarkson. “The cool thing about that for me is … [my visual development studio] had the opportunity to work on Ariel: Mermaid Tales!”

“The fact that we worked on something that when I come home and I see my daughter watching it, it gave me a whole different appreciation for what we do,” he added. “She asks for Ariel every day! … I almost shed a couple of thug tears.”

She motivates him to be a “better man”

Hodge admitted it can be “scary” being a dad because “you don’t want to mess up.” Despite that, he told The Grio in July 2024 that he actually has “the most ease and the most confidence when it comes to my daughter.”

He added that she “saved his life” because she helped him confront some personal things that he had never dealt with before.

“As a parent, there’s a lot of things that come up that you may not have known,” he said. “You have to step in and say, ‘Alright, I need to go ahead and have this conversation internally.’ I need to deal with this so that when I step out as an example to this little person, I can have the tools to be the right kind of teacher.”

Now that he has confronted some of that inner turmoil, he feels more confident than ever in his parenting ability. “My daughter is the one who’s brought up all these things for me to really want to be a better man,” he shared.

Hodge has a lot of support in raising his daughter

While Hodge is a doting dad to his little girl, he still has a busy work schedule that sometimes keeps him away. In those times, he leans on his wife and family for support.

“Having a great partner helps,” he told Essence in 2024 about how he prioritizes his family while his career skyrockets. “I do have to be very specific about my time and where I choose to put it and where I don’t … My wife is out here helping me figure out how to be as present as possible if I’m not physically there.”

For example, he wasn’t able to go trick-or-treating with his little girl, but he still supported her costume decision (even if it wasn’t his first choice).

“I’m actually enjoying the holiday now more because my daughter really loves it. She’s all into it,” he shared on Jimmy Kimmel Live in October 2024. “She’s obsessed with Spider-Man, she calls him Spider Webs. She should be dressing up as [my character] Hawkman. I’m not going to be in my feelings about it, but she wants to be Spider Webs.”

And though he couldn’t accompany her for the holiday, her mom still made sure it was special.

“I would like to take her trick-or-treating — I’m on a very heavy schedule right now, so she and mom are going to go to Paris where the other side of the family is and they’re going to go trick-or-treating out there,” he shared. “I think [they hand out] butter and baguettes,” he added with a laugh.

Hodge is also tight-knit with his mom and two siblings, and they’re also a massive support system for his little girl. “My mom, my sister, my brother, everybody’s jumped in to really make sure that the unit is strong and that my little mama knows she is loved and she knows her family and that she understands what family is,” he told Essence.