What is the full name of character with whom Elsa begins to identify with?
Agent Bart Langner finds Elsa Brinkmann, a would-be actress who looks and sounds just like  Lylah Clare, a flamboyant star who fell to her death in suspicious circumstances 20 years ago. He persuades arrogant director Lewis Zarkan, who had been married to Lylah, to see her. The two men then convince brash studio head Barney Sheean, who is equally struck, to back a picture with her as Lylah. 
Besides coping with the tyrannical Zarkan and easy access to alcohol and drugs, Elsa also has to contend with other hazards of Hollywood like malicious journalist Molly Luther and lesbian admirer Rossella. As filming continues, her identification with her rôle gets more intense. She also begins to fall in love with Zarkan, who is happy to sleep with her but his priority is to get his film finished. 
By the last day of shooting, her personality seems to have merged with that of the outrageous Lylah whose fatal fall, we learn, was prompted by the jealous Zarkan. To antagonise him, she first lets him find her in bed with the gardener. Then, as he directs her in a circus scene, she leaps to her death from the high-wire. The resulting publicity makes his film a huge success. Tragedy later comes when Zarkan himself is shot and killed by Rossella.
A final sequence (in this case, a TV commercial for dog food that interrupts the film itself) suggests that the world of Hollywood is literally one of dog eats dog.
Lylah Clare