Both ActionScript and Lua are compiled, one way or another. Unfortunately, not everyone seems to have caught on to this an people are still widely referring to all dynamic languages as interpreted. Dynamic typing, garbage collection, and just-in-time compilation have a cost, which I guess is what Carmack was referring to, but the term 'interpreter' seems poorly applied here.
People usually use "compiled" to refer to languages that lower programs into machine code. Lowering the program into a bytecode isn't sufficient.
Bytecode interpreters must be carefully optimized, and still usually have an unavoidable performance hit from their cache usage patterns (e.g. from bytecode being in d-cache).
Which is why dynamic languages are compiled to machine code nowadays. I'm not sure about ActionScript, but both JavaScript and Lua are compiled to machine code when speed matters.
