In this paper the role played by the angular momentum of light in the optical reorientation, of a nematic liquid crystal was studied in the case of a normal incident elliptically shaped laser beam with circular polarization. Above the threshold power for the OFT, the molecular director suffered a stationary reorientation due to the balance between the orbital and spin angular momentum of light transferred to the sample. The director started to rotate only above a second threshold power. The experimental results qualitatively matched theoretical predictions.