Everything that Catalyst says is definetly worth doing, but in terms of whether or not you should learn Actionscript, you need to ask yourself: How far do I want to go in Flash?

If you only ever want to make a few simple animations, then you probably won't need actionscript. In fact even some fairly beautifully designed sites only use very simple actionscript. However if you want to do anything advanced and learn Flash properly, you will of course need to tackle Actionscript. The best thing to do (and this is what I did), is to learn Actionscript as you learn Flash. The two really go hand in hand and you'll find that, as you need to do new things in Flash, they'll often require new bits of Actionscript.

The programming basics of Flash are covered here, you can find our list of Actionscript resources here and a good book always helps, in fact the Actionscript book on that page was chosen specifically by me because it caters for the complete beginner. Armed with that and the programming basics of Flash (above) and of course, this Forum and I would say that you're in a much better position for learning Actionscript than I was several years ago!