Her Books Show the Lifestyles of the Fictional and Famous. She’s Poised for Some Fame of Her Own.

Taylor Jenkins Reid, the author of “Daisy Jones & the Six” and one of this summer’s hits, “Malibu Rising,” is tapping into the desire among readers (and Hollywood) for escapism plus complexity.

If Taylor Jenkins Reid were writing herself into one of her novels, which include “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” “Daisy Jones & the Six” and this year’s “Malibu Rising,” she might slip in a scene where, roaming the stacks of a university library in Boston, she comes across “Starring Roles,” the 1992 book by Ron Base that explores the trajectory of actors like Judy Garland and Dustin Hoffman, whose careers were transformed by roles that nearly went to others. There Reid was, a 19-year-old pop-culture sponge — who spent a childhood vacation reading Lucille Ball’s memoir and who wrote movie quotes with marker on her bedroom walls (such as John Cusack’s “I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed” from “Say Anything”) — finding, in “Starring Roles,” her bible. It laid bare the layers of fame: the fictional character, the actor, the persona the actor sells to the press and the image the press presents to the public. “This has been the dynamic with movie stars since Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks,” Reid, 37, said on a video call while pacing the backyard of a Topanga Canyon rental (her Los Angeles house was under renovation), wearing a red T-shirt with the words, “Fiction, because real life is terrible.”