‘Captive’ survivor

Mara & vic tell harrowing tale

DESPITE HAVING already seen the crime drama “Captive” 10 times, Ashley Smith still struggles sitting through the suspenseful scenes.

That’s because the 37-year-old Georgia native was watching her own harrowing 2005 ordeal, in which she was taken hostage by a mass-murderer, unfold on the big screen.

“There were so many different emotions going through my mind watching it with my (now 16-year-old) daughter Paige,” said Smith about the movie, opening Friday, which is based on her memoir of the same name.

“We first cried just remembering the way things used to be 10 years ago,” added Smith, who is played by Kate Mara in the film. “It was tough to go back 10 years and relive those things. It was tough living on the edge of my seat every time even though I watched the film 10 times. It’s definitely very emotional.”

She’s come a long way since that fateful day — on March 11, 2005 — when escaped convict Brian Nichols (played on screen by “Selma’s” David Oyelowo) shot his way out of an Atlanta courthouse, killing the judge and three others in a day-long rampage. By nightfall, Nichols had stumbled on Smith, a widowed mom trying to kick a meth habit, taking her hostage and holing up in her apartment to evade police.

Particularly tough to watch for Smith — who has since married electrician Daniel Robinson, with whom she has another child — were the intense drug scenes, a part of her life that she left behind during her ordeal.

“I never felt like we had to glamorize that part of the story, she never made me feel that way,” Mara told the Daily News.

Actually, Mara went straight to the source for a lot of details, traveling to the South Carolina home of Smith’s aunt for a late lunch with the extended family just before filming kicked off in September 2013.

“It was very similar to my family, just incredibly huge,” said Mara, who is the scion of both the families that own the Giants and the Steelers. “It felt very, very comfortable to me, because it was the kind of environment I grew up in.”

One big difference: the visitor from Hollywood is a vegan and befuddled her hosts by politely declining just about everything on the table.

“I even brought my own fruit salad because I didn’t want to stress them out with trying to figure out what to feed me,” said Mara, laughing. “That was a topic of conversation.”

They had much more to talk about during the shoot.

“She and I became close,” said Mara. “I mean I would constantly text her questions as simple as, ‘What kind of music were you listening to at the time, and were your nails painted?’”

Smith said Mara’s performance, “definitely gets a standing ovation from me,” especially the riveting scene where Smith threatens to kill her if she doesn’t do meth with him. Facing a gunwielding murderer, Smith had a moment of clarity she credits to Jesus.

“I knew that if I was going to die that night, I didn’t want to have just done drugs if I was going to meet my maker,” said Smith.

“Whether I had five minutes left to live or I had 50 years to live, the decision was clear to me: I didn’t want that life anymore.”